Over the last 3 years, I tried building novel sensing instruments at the company where I was previously employed but could not deliver the final product due to many challenges. The work required expertise in many fronts- engineering, physics, magneto-optics, biology and medicine. One day the company’s CEO came to my office and said that it’s time to postpone the project. I felt bad as it was my passion and I was hoping that the project would be successful if I had more time. That was a year ago. Now looking back, I see that it was the best thing to happen to me.

When I was an employee in a company, I had to follow the company rules as set out by the company and like every body else, and be there on time, report the progress every week, set a meeting with the CEO, and so on. Navigating the company structure, some of the company decisions misaligned with my ethics and values, and a lack of team effort hindered my progress.

So, after I left the company and began applying for jobs, I realised I was offering much more than what the management was looking for and this might have been seen as a negative thing. Also, in some cases the company had a very specific need, whereas I had a multitude of expertise.

As an engineering student, I always wanted to build my own company, which I tried to do earlier but was unsuccessful. While being a researcher and not having a degree in management might be a factor, I was not a good planner. I decided that it was time for me to establish my own company and do some thing good for society, with an aim to innovate new devices.

I knew that one needed to combine many dissimilar material and ideas in order to innovate. Since I already had expertise on magnetics, photonics, chemistry and interest in biology, I found this perfect for me to develop new instruments that combine all these 4 fields. While its complexity was daunting, I was ready to move forward with this system after all, developing a new technique or new device requires to go beyond normal practices.

So, I hired employees and built a small team of people working from home-lab office solutions. Fast forward to 2020, COVID19 emerged, staff were laid off, company activities decreased, but despite of it all, I was still determined to work on the project. I out-sourced work, worked online with the staff where possible, looked out for funding through banks, and secured loans too. With freedom and hard work, I achieved a lot of work within the short period of a year and have now entered the stage of prototyping. Having built a good network with the university research centers and researchers, I’m hoping to collaborate. Just like me, you may also have a lot of potential hidden within you, you just need to take a chance on yourself.

#seednanotech #career #scientific

#challange #startup #seednano #innovation

COVID 19 has changed how things are done. We do not know how long our life will be like this, however, while we have dramatically reduced the number of cases by the lockdown, there will be consequences in education developments. Although many countries are in the process of easing restrictions, this by no means, implies that the virus is gone. In fact, we don’t know if the virus will ever be 100% gone or even if an effective vaccine will be created. As we try to move on with our lives, we need to focus on the fact that nothing will ever be the same and it is of utmost importance that we try to limit the spread to vulnerable people.

One of the most effective ways to do this is by contact tracing, which in Canada, it’s on its way to success. It’s no secret that the Coronavirus has made life more unpredictable. Testing is important because a lot of people have very mild symptoms and not knowing if they are affected by corona or it is different flue or symptoms. Expanding the testing capacity would allow people to know whether they have the virus and how to move on. It is very important to realize that the rate will never be zero, at least not in the near future, so while everything may seem to be getting back to normal, it is up to ourselves to protect and limit the spread to vulnerable people.

@ A part of the information is extracted from the article by Dr. Shyam P. Lohani, Professor, published in Rising Nepal. Dr. Lohani is a founder and academic director of Nobel College, Kathmandu, Nepal.

Introduction: Corona viruses are important respiratory pathogens to humans and animals. The viruses are widespread among birds and mammals, with bats having largest variety of genomes. They are the cause of community-acquired upper respiratory tract infections in adults and probably also play a role in severe respiratory infections in all age groups.

A novel corona virus was identified as the cause of a cluster of pneumonia cases in Wuhan, a city in the Hubei province of China, at the end of 2019. The 2019 novel corona virus (nCoV-19) is a new virus that causes respiratory illness in people and can spread from person to person. The cases are characterized primarily as fever, dyspnea, and bilateral infiltrates on chest imaging, but full clinical information is still under study.

Virology: Corona viruses are enveloped non-segmented positive sense RNA viruses belonging to the family Coronaviridae. The corona virus subfamily is further classified into four genera; alpha, beta, gamma and delta corona viruses. The human corona viruses (HCoVs) are in two of these genera: alpha corona viruses (HCoV-229E and HCoV-NL63) and beta corona viruses (HCov-OC43, HCov-HKU1, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Corona Virus (MERS-CoV), and the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Corona Viruses (SARS-CoV). Corona viruses are medium-sized enveloped RNA viruses whose name derives from their crown-like appearance in electron micrographs. The genome encodes four or five structural proteins; S, M, HE and E.

The corona virus infection is initiated by the attachment to specific host cell receptors in respiratory system via the spike (S) protein. The host receptor is a major determinant of pathogenicity, tissue tropism, and host range of the viruses. The interaction between the spike protein S1 triggers conformational changes in the S protein, which then promotes membrane fusion between the viral and cell membrane through the S2 domain protein. Ultimately, such phenomenon is responsible for viremia and respiratory problems including cough, chest pain and breathing difficulty, followed by pneumonia and severe acute respiratory infection (SARI).

Laboratory: Infections of the corona virus could be detected by various methods such as 1) viral antigen or antibody test by rapid diagnostic method, 2) detection of viral antigen by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method, and 3) virus isolation. Rapid detection of viral antigen is useful in early stages of infection with the presence of clinical symptoms. However, rapid detection of antibodies against the novel corona virus can be done after 7 to 10 days of infection with clinical symptoms. In this context, antibody detection tests should be repeated after one to two-weeks later because of the long incubation period and other confounding factors such as immune status, exposure or contact history as well as, asymptomatic condition of individuals.

The Real-Time RT-PCR diagnostic test is intended for the qualitative detection of nucleic acid of nCoV in upper and lower respiratory specimens (such as nasopharyngeal or oropharyngeal swabs, sputum, lower respiratory tract aspirates, bronchoalveolar lavage and nasopharyngeal wash/aspirate or nasal aspirate) collected from individuals who meet 2019-nCoV clinical and/or epidemiological criteria (for example, clinical sign and symptoms associated with 2019-nCoV infection, contact with probable or confirmed case, history of travel to geographic locations where novel corona virus cases were detected, or other epidemiological links such a community transmission for which novel corona virus testing may be indicated as part of a public health investigation).The Real time PCR method is considered as the gold standard test for early detection and confirmation of the novel corona virus infection. However, detection limits, sensitivity and specificity of the real time PCR test kit are crucial factors for a confirmatory diagnosis of the novel corona virus 2019 infection.

@ Courtesy of Bishnu P Upadhyay, PhD Scholar, Pokhara University & Dr. Shyam P. Lohani, Professor and Founder, Nobel College  (Affiliated to Pokhara University), Kathmandu, Nepal

Before, sensors were used to be just used for testing glucose level in humans, but now they have been developed to detect many dangerous diseases. As sensors have evolved, they now are needed more than ever with diseases such as many forms of cancer, and COVID 19 are prevalent. The problem is that there is a disconnect between what we need these sensors to do, and what they are currently capable of doing. That’s why we need ultra-sensitive sensors in order to detect diseases at the earliest stages because so many often get missed as a result of current detection limits. This is why we at Seed NanoTech, have come up with the concept of magnetoplasmonic sensor with sharp resonances, and high sensitivity and detection limits. Our approach is based on the combination of a specially designed metallic and ferromagnetic layers that are optimized to detect changes in the environment refractive index,  examined using magnetic activity in addition to the plasmonic and optical activities.

For more information, CLICK here.

Dr. Rizal is a guest editor of Special Issue of Magnetoplasmonics:

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/condensedmatter/special_issues/Magnet_plas