There are many faces on the front lines trying to fight to coronavirus pandemic. There are other faces we don't see, like scientists who are trying to solve the mystery behind a cure.

"We are trying to get a sense of what the different pieces and parts of what these biological pieces look like," said Sarah Bowman, the director of the Crystallization Center Lab.

Scientists at Hauptman-Woodward Research Institute work with non-infectious samples of the coronavirus to better understand how certain drugs interact with it. By using X-ray crystallography, which acts as a map, Sarah's team is able to get a bigger picture of what molecules in the virus look like.

"At this moment we have only gotten samples from the U.S. but we have gotten some inquiries from overseas as well," Bowman said.

HWI has another team in Chicago that has made progress by collecting as much data as possible about how different drugs react with the virus. To help us understand a little science behind the virus, Bowman explains what her team is working on through one of the photos of COVID-19 that has been floating around on social media.

"Those red things that are sticking out in that picture are actually a particular protein called a spike protein and the structure of that was solved really quickly, and being able to know the structure of that will help us figure out what drugs might stop it from spiking into human cells and infecting people," Bowman added.

Bowman says every day they are one step closer to finding a vaccine that will defeat the virus.