Wine testing device gets commercialisation boost
A University of Canterbury PhD candidate is fast tracking the commercialisation of a wine testing device with help from the KiwiNet Emerging Innovator Programme.
PhD candidate Daniel Mak receives a UC Innovation Jumpstart 2021 award from UC’s Deputy Vice-chancellor (Research) Professor Ian Wright.
“I am really excited for this opportunity to work on the commercialisation of my research. I think it is important for scientific research to have a tangible benefit to society, and commercialisation is one way to achieve that”, Mak says.
Mak’s project will develop autonomous, hand-held, Lab-on-a-Chip devices that can perform complex chemical and biochemical reactions to replace traditional laboratory tests for a range of wine analytes.
Working alongside the University of Canterbury’s Professor Renwick Dobson and Associate Professor Volker Nock, and Dr Tanya Rutan from the Bragato Research Institute, a research centre that drives world-leading innovation for the New Zealand wine industry, the team’s solution cuts out the need for large, complex equipment and simplifies the testing methods.
The key to their innovation is the capillary aspect of the devices. Advantages of the capillary technology is that it requires minimal user interaction and equipment, which lowers the cost of testing and provides quick results.