Part 7: SHIELD _ A Look Back on the Carle Illinois' Response to COVID-19

SHIELD is now expanding across the state, country, with the potential and interest to expand around the world. The breakthroughs discovered at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign became a model to institutions around the world as an example of how to reopen as safely as possible.

During the summer of 2020, President Tim Killeen told the SHIELD T3 team their work was an “Illinois moment in the making” and tasked the SHIELD T3 team with making it as big as possible. The team did. “We knew this was going to be bigger than our campus,” Martin Burke, Carle Illinois associate dean for research said.

The university system launched two organizations to share the SHIELD ecosystem with the state of Illinois and with the world.

Illinois SHIELD was launched to spread UIUC’s approach across the state, including efforts for K-12 schools.

SHIELD T3 (Target, Test, Tell) was launched to expand it across the country. SHIELD T3 is university-run and set up with a model to allow its efforts to be resourced appropriately to industrialize the SHIELD platform.

SHIELD T3 has now expanded to more than 20 universities across the country- with the number growing at press time. Bloom Energy has also launched a commercial enterprise from the platform in California. New Zealand marks one of the first international partners to begin launching the Shield platform in its country.

“Our charge as a land grant mission is to serve the public good. We take that very seriously. That is what drives us- is to make an impact and we all talk as a team. At the end of the day, we all just want to tell our grandkids about a story where we hopefully made a difference during this really challenging time,” Burke said. “That kind of common commitment to do something that matters, that has been the key driver.”

This is Part 7 of the series “A Look Back on the Carle Illinois' Response to COVID-19.”