Alzheimer’s researchers, aerosol engineer team up to develop rapid screening tools Graduate students Esther Monroe (left) and Nishit Shetty carry out droplet experiments using a custom-built environmental rotating chamber. A team of researchers at Washington University is developing devices to detect the virus that causes COVID-19 in the air. (Photo: Rajan Chakrabarty) April 16, 2021 SHARE As the COVID-19 pandemic surged last summer and contact tracers struggled to identify sources of infections, John Cirrito, PhD, associate professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Carla Yuede, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry, began to kick around an idea. Could a biosensor they’d developed years ago for Alzheimer’s disease be converted into a detector for the virus that causes COVID-19?