Two young Berkeley chemists vie for top honors in collegiate inventors competition
| 24 October 2008
BERKELEY — A low-tech medical-diagnostic technique, first conceived over coffee at UC Berkeley, has put a pair of young scientists in the running for top awards at the 2008 Collegiate Inventors Competition. Khalid Salaita, a Berkeley chemistry postdoc, and Nathan Clack, a 2007 Berkeley PhD graduate, are finalists in the national contest. They will vie with 11 other inventor teams for high honors and cash prizes at a final judging round in Kansas City, Mo. in mid November.
The chemists' "Electrostatic Readout of Microarrays" relies on the electrostatic properties of DNA, rather than expensive instruments and chemical-labeling techniques, to detect diseases and pathogens. Soon after Salaita and Clack first discussed the concept, in 2006, they realized that it could prove a boon to health care in the developing world — making it possible to easily detect whether a patient, say, has a resistant strain of tuberculosis or is infected with HIV. "It's really thrilling," Salaita says of the invention and its recognition by the competition judges. "How it all came together is fantastic."
Clack and Salaita, a native of Jordan, refined their concept in a Lewis Hall chemistry lab, with faculty member Jay Groves as their academic adviser. The two 29 year olds recently filed a patent application for their invention at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (one of the sponsors of the competition), and advanced to finalist status after a phone interview with a contest judge.
They're now collaborating long-distance (Clack has since moved to the East Coast) for their Nov. 17 presentation — a slide show and possibly a live demonstration of their new technique — before a panel of recognized inventors. Winners will be announced at an awards ceremony two days later, with top finalists receiving $15,000 each, and $25,000 going to the grand-prize winner.