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Guwahati, Sunday, May 22, 2005
Knowing nanotech: the Handique way
By Devol K Nath
GUWAHATI, May 21 — Can you imagine what the world will be like if everything is reduced by ten times? Picture this. The world around you have been reduced by ten times. The watch you are wearing is minuscule in size. The car you drive looks like the toy car your niece holds in her hand. The newspaper you are reading this article from is just 5.5 cm long. In fact even you are just about six inches tall.
Enter the world of nanotech. The world where everything is a thousand million times smaller. Nano is a unit of measurement that is one billionth of a metre. For example, a human hair is about 20,000 nanometre thick. The Chambers dictionary describes nano as “in composition, one thousand millionth, 10-9”, while the nanotech think tank defines nanotechnology as the coming ability to build products with atomic precision. The prevalent idea is that nanotech can alter the very way medical science works now.
If you have watched the Spielberg movie The Inner Space you already have a fair idea of what nanotech can do for us. In the movie a spacecraft-like machine is miniaturized to the size of an atom and is injected into the body of a human being. The craft moves around the human body thereby giving a detailed view and idea of the human body. That may sound a far-off idea now, but the day will certainly be around.
However, we already have nanotech devices working for us. Almost all of us have been to the pathological lab for one or the other reason – personal or otherwise. The whole process there calls for a huge lot of time and money, apart from the highly qualified manpower to detect or diagnose the anomalies from the samples. God save the patient if the test result is needed immediately to save a patient. Here comes nanotech in the picture.
Nanotech devices, as the name itself suggests, are miniature in size but works in the same way as the huge laboratories do. Nanotech can reduce the cost factor to a large extent, apart from reducing the time consumed in diagnosis of diseases, thereby giving the patient a better chance to survive.
India might be lagging behind in the technology but the Indians are not. Hard to believe as it might be, it is an Assamese boy named Kalyan Handique who is spearheading a leading US company. The aptly called ‘HandyLab’, which specializes in nanotech medical equipment, is the brainchild of Guwahati-born but Michigan resident Handique and his Michigan University batchmate Sudarshan Brahmasandra. Handique, along with Sudarshan, have co-authored peer-reviewed articles on several core HandyLab technologies that have been published in leading international journals and periodicals, including Science (1998), Analytical Chemistry (2000), and Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering (2001). Biochip Technology, published in 2001, featured a chapter co-written by both of them.
Handique (Handy as he is known popularly), a PhD, co-founder and chief technology officer of the company, developed HandyLab’s groundbreaking micro-fluidic technology while working on his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan. He is a master in designing, micro-fabrication and testing of microfluidic devices.
Handique’s handy devices are doing wonders in the US and he is trying to push the technology to the rest of the world. The device, which is actually a palmtop-like cassette size hand-held computer, works this way: It has micro channels, with small valves and gates that heat tiny samples of fluid to detect pathogens and contaminants. The specimen is first encapsulated in a sample collector and then inserted into the miniaturized laboratory. The channels in the chips are about 300 microns wide, about three times the width of the average human hair and can process as little as 250 nanoliters of fluid. The analyzed result of the test can be viewed on the LCD screen attached to the box. Incredibly good to be true but it is the truth.
The device is so handy that it can be used on-site, such as in an emergency room or on a battlefield, saving time and money. Handique says that this technology will someday also be available in India. “Once the production cost comes down the device will definitely be available in India,” Handique adds.
The amiable and studious-looking young man says that he has already got in touch with government officials as, according to him, HandyLab already has devices which can detect diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and a few other diseases commonly found in India. Indeed “the devise will be handy in areas like Maibong, Haflong, etc., where malaria is still a problem to reckon with”, the bespectacled young man adds.
The HandyLab has done its job so good that the company had last year won a $2-million Federal Grant to develop a similar ‘lab-on-a-chip’ to monitor blood, air and water samples for pathogens and chemicals. The device, about 2 inches square, will help diagnose illnesses in people and animals and monitor pollution and threats to the military and US security. Of the 1,075 proposals, HandyLab’s was one of just 107 that were approved for Federal Grants.
The company’s first US patent has already been awarded for the thermally-activated gates that control the movement of fluid in the chips. “More important things are about to happen soon and HandyLab is closing in on its nano dreams,” says Handique.
The day is not far when the laboratory will come to the patient’s home to diagnose the ailment. And maybe one day a nano robot will probe the human body, as Speilberg had imagined in his movie The Inner Space. The world is really shrinking!!
Guwahati, Sunday, May 22, 2005
Knowing nanotech: the Handique way
By Devol K Nath
GUWAHATI, May 21 — Can you imagine what the world will be like if everything is reduced by ten times? Picture this. The world around you have been reduced by ten times. The watch you are wearing is minuscule in size. The car you drive looks like the toy car your niece holds in her hand. The newspaper you are reading this article from is just 5.5 cm long. In fact even you are just about six inches tall.
Enter the world of nanotech. The world where everything is a thousand million times smaller. Nano is a unit of measurement that is one billionth of a metre. For example, a human hair is about 20,000 nanometre thick. The Chambers dictionary describes nano as “in composition, one thousand millionth, 10-9”, while the nanotech think tank defines nanotechnology as the coming ability to build products with atomic precision. The prevalent idea is that nanotech can alter the very way medical science works now.
If you have watched the Spielberg movie The Inner Space you already have a fair idea of what nanotech can do for us. In the movie a spacecraft-like machine is miniaturized to the size of an atom and is injected into the body of a human being. The craft moves around the human body thereby giving a detailed view and idea of the human body. That may sound a far-off idea now, but the day will certainly be around.
However, we already have nanotech devices working for us. Almost all of us have been to the pathological lab for one or the other reason – personal or otherwise. The whole process there calls for a huge lot of time and money, apart from the highly qualified manpower to detect or diagnose the anomalies from the samples. God save the patient if the test result is needed immediately to save a patient. Here comes nanotech in the picture.
Nanotech devices, as the name itself suggests, are miniature in size but works in the same way as the huge laboratories do. Nanotech can reduce the cost factor to a large extent, apart from reducing the time consumed in diagnosis of diseases, thereby giving the patient a better chance to survive.
India might be lagging behind in the technology but the Indians are not. Hard to believe as it might be, it is an Assamese boy named Kalyan Handique who is spearheading a leading US company. The aptly called ‘HandyLab’, which specializes in nanotech medical equipment, is the brainchild of Guwahati-born but Michigan resident Handique and his Michigan University batchmate Sudarshan Brahmasandra. Handique, along with Sudarshan, have co-authored peer-reviewed articles on several core HandyLab technologies that have been published in leading international journals and periodicals, including Science (1998), Analytical Chemistry (2000), and Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering (2001). Biochip Technology, published in 2001, featured a chapter co-written by both of them.
Handique (Handy as he is known popularly), a PhD, co-founder and chief technology officer of the company, developed HandyLab’s groundbreaking micro-fluidic technology while working on his doctorate degree at the University of Michigan. He is a master in designing, micro-fabrication and testing of microfluidic devices.
Handique’s handy devices are doing wonders in the US and he is trying to push the technology to the rest of the world. The device, which is actually a palmtop-like cassette size hand-held computer, works this way: It has micro channels, with small valves and gates that heat tiny samples of fluid to detect pathogens and contaminants. The specimen is first encapsulated in a sample collector and then inserted into the miniaturized laboratory. The channels in the chips are about 300 microns wide, about three times the width of the average human hair and can process as little as 250 nanoliters of fluid. The analyzed result of the test can be viewed on the LCD screen attached to the box. Incredibly good to be true but it is the truth.
The device is so handy that it can be used on-site, such as in an emergency room or on a battlefield, saving time and money. Handique says that this technology will someday also be available in India. “Once the production cost comes down the device will definitely be available in India,” Handique adds.
The amiable and studious-looking young man says that he has already got in touch with government officials as, according to him, HandyLab already has devices which can detect diseases like malaria, tuberculosis and a few other diseases commonly found in India. Indeed “the devise will be handy in areas like Maibong, Haflong, etc., where malaria is still a problem to reckon with”, the bespectacled young man adds.
The HandyLab has done its job so good that the company had last year won a $2-million Federal Grant to develop a similar ‘lab-on-a-chip’ to monitor blood, air and water samples for pathogens and chemicals. The device, about 2 inches square, will help diagnose illnesses in people and animals and monitor pollution and threats to the military and US security. Of the 1,075 proposals, HandyLab’s was one of just 107 that were approved for Federal Grants.
The company’s first US patent has already been awarded for the thermally-activated gates that control the movement of fluid in the chips. “More important things are about to happen soon and HandyLab is closing in on its nano dreams,” says Handique.
The day is not far when the laboratory will come to the patient’s home to diagnose the ailment. And maybe one day a nano robot will probe the human body, as Speilberg had imagined in his movie The Inner Space. The world is really shrinking!!
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