New Inventions Offer Exciting Real-World Applications

In greenhouses and food processing facilities, inspections for spoilage, pest infestation and other threats to the food supply chain have long been carried out by visual analysis. But these analyses can be slow, and when access to expertise is threatened by worker shortages or public health restrictions, the time it takes to identify a problem can result in serious downstream effects, even leading to bare shelves in some sections of grocery stores. Researchers on a team led by Dr. Arezoo Emadi in the Faculty of Engineering landed two Lab2Market grants in 2021-2022, a program designed to bring new technologies out of the lab and into the field. Graduate students Haleh Nazemi and Siddharth Swaminathan worked on parallel microsensor projects under Dr. Emadi’s supervision, with Nazemi focusing on pests in greenhouses, while Swaminathan examined food spoilage in other parts of the supply chain. Both used sensors designed to “see with smell,” that is, to detect the chemical compounds and microorganisms in the air that also contribute to the smell of rotten food. Using Lab2Market funds, both students were able to assess the needs of the market, and then develop, test, and patent prototypes of their devices. “The work has to be multidisciplinary,” says Dr. Emadi, because it requiresunderstanding the chemical makeup of signatures that could be found in the air and developing the technology to analyse and report on it quickly. Nazemi and Swaminathan both highlight the transferrable skills they learn working on these projects, which help them understand how to communicate with their collaborators and gear their research to the most current challenges they face. “It is a big personal achievement to see my device at work in a greenhouse,” says Nazemi. “I get to see how my research can make a real difference for food safety in Canada,” adds Swaminathan, whose device will be tested in a meat processing facility. “We also learned how to file a patent and protect our intellectual property.” The team hopes that in the future a startup company will be able to help them establish their technology in the market. The project has support from the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers Association, as well as the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture, Food, and Rural Affairs, and Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada.

Siddharth Swaminathan and Haleh Nazemi, students in Dr. Arezoo Emadi’s lab, work on their sensors.