Hone‘s platform uses new developments in spectroscopy to test the chemical traits of any solid or liquid using a combination of a handheld device, a mobile app, and a machine learning cloud solution.
The business, co-founded by Dr Antony Martin, Dr Jamie Flynn, and Dr William Palmer, has been awarded $837,000 from the NSW Physical Sciences Fund to further develop their technology in partnership with the Australian Wine Research Institute.
They were among five teams to share in $5 million in funding announced in Sydney on Tuesday 10 December by the NSW Minister for Planning and Public Spaces, The Hon. Rob Stokes. The Fund is administered through the Office of the NSW Chief Scientist & Engineer and seeks to capture potential commercial applications of NSW research across all branches of physical sciences.
Drs Martin, Flynn and Palmer were working on their Ph.D. at the University of Newcastle when they were introduced to the requirement for rapid testing.
Part of their study required the team to work in a sorghum field as they attempted to breed the best version of the cereal grain possible for a biofuels project. They knew there had to be a better way than bagging and shipping samples to a laboratory for expensive tests that took days, sometimes even weeks, for results to be known.
Early support by generous donors, HMRI, CSIRO ON, and the Integrated Innovation Network (I2N) kick-started the development of the technology that underpins Hone.
Read more at https://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/research-and-innovation/hone-takes-research-to-the-real-world