Hawaii-grown Team Merlin is among 10 finalists out of nearly 1,000 entrants in the XPRIZE Foundation’s $1 Million Next-Gen Mask Challenge for young innovators age 15-24.
The global challenge, to build a better face mask, is sponsored by Marc Benioff, founder and CEO of Salesforce, and Jim Cramer, host of “Mad Money” on CNBC.
Online voting to select the top five finalists is taking place now at XPRIZE.org/masksurvey. The winners will be announced Dec. 17.
Sara Gallagher and myself, Brandon Zunin, 23, grew up on Oahu and are graduates of Punahou School. We are two of three members comprising Team Merlin. Our team was honored to make it to the final 10 by advancing through two rounds of judging by XPRIZE and industry experts.
We hope you will take time to visit the website and vote for us.
A win will enable us to produce superior masks for our island community. We have reenvisioned the face mask from the ground up.
Today we all need to wear some sort of face covering throughout much of our daily lives to protect our health and the health of our communities. But few of us enjoy wearing a mask.
Team Merlin has come up with a solution we hope will alleviate the suffering of hot and itchy faces, fogged glasses, sore ears, restricted breathing, difficult conversations, hidden facial expressions, expense and production waste. It is time to toss outdated technologies into the recycling bin and bring in a new era.
Our design is inspired by nature and makes breathing and exercise 28% easier. It also reduces the amount of uncomfortably hot skin by 60%. We use strategic corrugations in a rounded concentric pattern. The stiffening effect of the corrugations prevents material from collapsing onto the face during inhalation, making breathing easier and speaking easily heard.
We are able to achieve both of these desirable results while still reducing the trapped air volume and re-inhalation of stale air. This enhances comfort.
The internal geometry of the mask induces a flow of exhaled air down and away from the face. Combined with our effective and comfortable peripheral seal design, this eliminates fogged glasses. It also gives wearers and bystanders the full benefit of the filter, as no air leaks around it, and since this seal requires less skin contact and compressive force, it enhances comfort.
The mask’s narrow profile exposes 60% more of the wearer’s face, making facial expressions easily seen. You don’t breathe through your cheeks, right? So don’t cover them. Innovative zero- waste fabrication methods make this mask the eco-friendly choice for our planet and the affordable, accessible choice for our communities.
That’s our pitch, and I hope you can vote for us.
With an XPRIZE win, Team Merlin will start production and get better masks on the faces of the people of Hawaii, masks that are safer, more comfortable and more aesthetic. We hope to leave a lasting legacy and contribute to fewer cases and fewer deaths from COVID-19. Once more, Hawaii has an opportunity to lead the way as a safer, more beautiful place to live and visit.
Brandon Zunin, a biomedical engineer, is leader of Team Merlin. Please submit your questions to zuninb@gmail.com. Brandon is the son of Dr. Ira Zunin, who usually writes the monthly Wealth of Health column.
