Dear Colleagues,

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of those global challenges that transcends territorial, political, ideological, religious, cultural, and certainly academic boundaries. It is highly contagious and may lead to acute respiratory distress or multiple organ failure in severe cases. On January 30, 2020, the outbreak was declared a “public health emergency of international concern” (PHEIC) by the World Health Organization (WHO). Public health and healthcare workers are at the frontline, working to contain and to mitigate the spread of this disease. In this context, what will be the global impact of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and what are the strategies that we could use to combat it? Although intervening biological and immunological responses against viral infection may seem far from the physical, mathematical sciences and engineering that typically work with inanimate objects, there actually is much that can—and should—be done to help in this global crisis. Moreover, because the virus that causes COVID-19 is new, modelers need estimates for key model parameters. The World Health Organization organizes regular calls for COVID-19 modelers to compare strategies and outcomes, since that's a huge help in reducing discrepancies between the models that policymakers find difficult to handle. Also, artificial intelligence (AI) can help, since it has demonstrated great success in the medical imaging domain due to its high capability of feature extraction. In the case of pandemic crisis situations, a crucial lack of protective material such as protective face masks for healthcare professionals can occur. Proof of concepts (PoC) and prototypes need to be developed, as do novel biomaterials against virus or novel system of sterilization.

With this perspective, the aim of this Special Issue is to collect contributions from different research fields related to the development or application of novel strategies to combat COVID-19.

Dr. Barbara Zavan
Guest Editor

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• Biomaterials 
• artificial intelligence 
• 3D printing 
• digital twins 
• modelling 
• advanced therapies 
• exosomes 
• lab on chip 
• stem cells