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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