2022 Yes https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ina.13027 Tang, Julian W North America Opinion Why has the COVID‐19 pandemic generated such global interest from the engineering community? Firstly, the nature of the COVID‐19 pandemic (by definition) is global, with SARS‐CoV‐2 spread to all populations worldwide—rather than just being limited to a few, like avian influenza (mainly in East/Southeast Asia), MERS (mainly the Middle East), Ebola (most recently West and traditionally Central Africa), and Zika virus (most recently South America, and previously outbreaks in Oceania). The second reason is that the relatively slow progression of the COVID‐19 pandemic and its high severity have given time and motivation for engineers to respond with their innate expertise in developing and applying methods to both understand how the virus was spreading and how to control it. Thirdly, it rapidly became clear that this virus was not spreading via traditional contact and droplet transmission modes, but more likely via an airborne ‘aerosol transmission’ route.