LIFT and IACMI, the two Detroit-based manufacturing innovation institutes, have donated their supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) to nearby Community Health and Social Services (CHASS) centre to fight against coronavirus.Together, the institutes donated: 300 safety glasses; 300 safety glasses; 1,400 nitrile gloves; and 60 tyvek lab coats.

 

“This material will go a long way in keeping our staff safe as we fight this virus here in Southwest Detroit,” Felix Valbuena, MD, chief executive officer, Community Health and Social Services (CHASS) Center, said in a press release. “We appreciate both LIFT and IACMI and everything they and their networks are doing to keep our community safe and healthy.”

 

“We are all in this fight together,” Nigel Francis, LIFT chief executive officer and executive director, said. “Our national ecosystem of manufacturers is doing everything it can to develop everything from ventilators to masks in order to support the medical community. We wanted to make sure we were doing our part to support them locally.”

 

“We have been proud to be a part of the Corktown neighbourhood since we opened our doors in 2017, and now is a time for us all to come together to collectively support our community,” Ray Boeman, director of the IACMI Scale Up Research Facility (SURF), managed and operated by Michigan State University, and IACMI’s vehicles technology area director, said in the release. “IACMI, LIFT, and our partners are leveraging novel strategies to utilise our resources to support our nation, and we are glad to be able to stand with our Detroit community during this challenging time.”

 

Both institutes, LIFT, a department of defense partner, and IACMI, a department of energy partner, operate an applied research & development and educational facility in the Corktown neighbourhood of Detroit. The institutes, public-private partnerships between government, industry and academia, are part of the larger manufacturing USA network.

 

Along with the donation of PPE to the CHASS Centre, LIFT is also 3D printing N95 masks and has connected members of its manufacturing ecosystem to the government and other manufacturers to assist in manufacturing critical supplies.

 

“The institutes were created to develop manufacturing ecosystems across the country,” Francis said. “I am proud of how the manufacturing base across the nation is rallying in support of this national crisis.”