David Fernández, Cuban scientist wins Prince Friso Engineering Prize from the European Union for invention of vaccinating without needles

March 24, 2021

It seems like science fiction to think that one day we could vaccinate or tattoo ourselves without needles, but engineer David Fernández and his team in the Netherlands are taking steps in that direction, which is why the Cuban-born engineer has received the Prince Friso Engineering Award from the European Union.

The injection is achieved by creating tiny bubbles using a laser. That was David Fernández's initial experiment in 2007. These bubbles make it possible to generate jets or drops of liquid fast and small enough to penetrate the skin or to clean delicate objects.

In research dating from 2014, bubbles created with continuous-wave lasers make it possible to generate jets or drops of liquid fast and small enough to penetrate the skin. The drops have a diameter comparable to that of a human hair and travel at 224 miles per hour.

In collaboration with a group of Mexican researchers, they were able to experimentally demonstrate the generation of jets or drops of liquid capable of traveling at speeds greater than 15 m/s," Fernández explained.

In the samples of ex-vivo porcine skin used by the team at the University of Twente, no damage to the skin is observed. "This already represents a superiority to any other needle injection method, since there is no wound to heal, and everything suggests that it should not hurt much. It is compared to a mosquito bite," affirms the Cuban engineer, who works with a team of postgraduate students and a business developer.

Currently David is Associate Professor of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States, but he recalls with emotion and admiration his professors in Cuba. They, with few resources, managed to conduct laboratory practices.