really transform the food safety
sensing market. It showed faster
results than anything currently
available on the market, and could
still be produced at very low cost.”
Janus emulsions respond
exceptionally quickly to
contaminants and provide
quantifiable results that are visible
to the naked eye or can be read
via a smartphone sensor.
“The technology is rooted in very
interesting science,” Hartshorn
says. “What we are doing is
marrying this scientific discovery
to an engineered product that
meets a genuine need and that
consumers will actually adopt.”
Having already secured nearly
$1 million in seed funding from a
variety of sources, and also being
accepted into Sprout, a highly
respected agri-food accelerator,
they are off to a fast start.
Solving a billiondollar
industry
challenge
Why does speed matter? In the
field of food safety testing, the
standard practice is to culture
food samples to see if harmful
bacterial colonies form. This
process can take many days,
and often can only be performed
offsite in a specialised lab.
While more rapid techniques exist,
they are expensive and require
specialized instruments — which
are not widely available — and
still typically require 24 hours
or more from start to finish. In
instances where there is a long
delay between food sampling
and contaminant detection, food
products could have already
reached consumers hands — and
upset their stomachs. While the
instances of illness and death
that can occur from food-borne
illness are alarming enough, there
are other costs as well. Food
recalls result in tremendous
waste, not only of the food
products themselves but of the
labour and resources involved
in their growth, transportation,
and processing. Food recalls
also involve lost profit for the
company. North America alone
loses $5 billion annually in recalls,
and that doesn’t count the indirect
costs associated with the damage
that occurs to particular brands,
including market share losses that
can last for years.
The food industry would benefit
from a sensor that could provide
fast and accurate readings of
the presence and amount of
bacterial contamination onsite.
The Swager Group’s Janus
emulsion technology has many
of the elements required to meet
this need and Xibus Systems is
working to improve the speed,
accuracy, and overall product
design to ready the sensor for
market.
Two other J-WAFS-funded
researchers have helped improve
the efficiency of early product
designs. Mathias Kolle, assistant
professor in the Department of
Mechanical Engineering at MIT
and recipient of a separate 2017
J-WAFS seed grant, is an expert
on optical materials. In 2018,
he and his graduate student
Sara Nagelberg performed the
calculations describing light’s
interaction with the Janus
particles so that Swager’s team
could modify the design and
improve performance. Kolle
continues to be involved, serving
with Swager on the technical
advisory team for Xibus.
This effort was a new direction
for the Swager group. Says
Swager: “The technology
we originally developed was
completely unprecedented. At
the time that we applied to for a
J-WAFS Solutions grant, we were
working in new territory and had
minimal preliminary results. At that
time, we would have not made it
through, for example, government
funding reviews which can
be conservative. J-WAFS
sponsorship of our project at this
early stage was critical to help
us to achieve the technology
innovations that serve as the
foundation of this new startup.”
Xibus co-founder Kent Harvey
— also a member of the original
MIT research team—is joined
by Matthias Oberli and Yuri
Malinkevich. Together with
Hartshorn they are working on a
prototype for initial market entry.
They are actually developing two
different products: a smartphone
sensor that is accessible to
everyday consumers, and a
portable handheld device that
is more sensitive and would
be suitable for industry. If they
are able to build a successful
platform that meets industry
needs for affordability, accuracy,
ease of use, and speed, they
could apply that platform to any
situation where a user would
need to analyse organisms that
live in water. This opens up many
sectors in the life sciences,
including water quality, soil
sensing, veterinary diagnostics,
as well as fluid diagnostics for the
broader healthcare sector.
The Xibus team wants to nail their
product right off the bat.
“Since food safety sensing is a
crowded field, you only get one
shot to impress your potential
customers,“ Hartshorn says. “If
your first product is flawed or not
interesting enough, it can be very
hard to open the door with these
customers again. So, we need to
be sure our prototype is a gamechanger.
That’s what’s keeping us
awake at night.”
Depth, MF, UF and RO Filters QA, R&D Laboratory Filters Ultrapure Water Systems
office@micronz.co.nz www.micronz.co.nz 0800 224 426
FT525
12 MAY 2019
/www.micronz.co.nz
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