Tiny tech, big impact: Miniaturized gas-analyzing tech boldly moves research forward

Since his introduction as a character in the 1960s science fiction show “Star Trek,” Spock has had a worldwide impact on pop culture.

Masoud Agah, director of the Virginia Alliance for Semiconductor Technology, hopes to make an equal impact with his own SPOCK: the first-ever “miniature” chromatograph.

Although it sounds like something out of “Star Trek,” a chromatograph is a tool that analyzes the chemical composition of materials, such as water, soil, drugs, food, pollutants, and in the case of Agah’s size-segregated particle odor chromatograph kernel, or SPOCK, gases and aerosols. 

“It’s the first of its kind, a truly miniaturized platform,” said Agah, who is also the Virginia Microelectronics Consortium Professor in the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “There’s no equivalent with this size platform that also measures the chemical composition and physical properties of aerosols.”

As the director of a research group focused on machine learning and core faculty at the Sanghani Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Analysis, Hoda Eldardiry’s expertise in machine learning “on the edge” — an advancing field of research — helps make SPOCK possible.

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