BATON ROUGE - An LSU chemist has spent the last several weeks helping prepare thousands of gallons of hand sanitizer to be used in Louisiana. 

Ph.D. student Anthony Mai and his advisor, LSU Chemistry Chair John Pojman, are ensuring the quality of over 5,000 gallons of hand rub sanitizer. Last week, the first two batches were placed into 5,300 bottles and distributed all over the state. Mai worked in the chemical industry before entering LSU’s graduate program and is familiar with working with such large-scale amounts of liquid chemicals.

This week, the chemists and workers at the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center’s soap plant warehouse mixed and bottled thousands more of the sanitizer that will be used to fight the spread of coronavirus.