Dr. Aydogan Ozcan of the Ozcan Research Group at UCLA and Founder & Director of Holomic LLC is positive about Holomic’s participation stating, “The Nokia Sensing challenge highlights the tipping point for telemedicine in general. We are surrounded by digital technologies that are ubiquitous, and yet extremely advanced in terms of their electrical, optical, and mechanical components, computational power and connectivity. Holomic and its core technologies are uniquely suited to win the Nokia Sensing Challenge as it harnesses the existing digital infrastructure for new micro-analysis, sensing and diagnostics technologies, empowering point-of-care offices and even homes with a suite of technologies that used to exist only in advanced laboratories. This is just the beginning of a revolution that we will experience around healthcare, where Holomic will have significant contributions to”.

32 teams have qualified for the competition, of which 12 teams will make it to the qualifying round. Finalists will be announced in October 2013, of which the Grand Prize winner will receive a $525,000 prize.

Holomic LLC www.holomic.com   was formed in 2011 to commercialize advanced BioPhotonics technologies invented at the world-renowned research laboratory of Professor Aydogan Ozcan at UCLA www.innovate.ee.ucla.edu. Among the many applications that the company will present at the Nokia challenge is the cellphone-based Holomic Rapid Diagnostic Reader (HRDR). The reader combines the features and the power of today’s smartphones with advanced optical and software design to give the user a unique lightweight, handheld, accurate, and economical reader for improved rapid diagnostics with lateral flow immunoassay devices.  For more information contact Ketaki Sood, Director of Product Marketing, ketaki@holomic.com  310.443.2070.

The aim of the conference is to convene a network of influential decision-makers from the private and public sector globally to solve important social and economic challenges that improve lives. Speakers at the conference are a respected team of economists, industry experts, and scholars including Marc Andreessen , Co-Founder and Partner, Andreessen Horowitz, Madelyn Antoncic , Vice President and Treasurer, The World Bank, Gary Becker,  Nobel Laureate; Professor of Economics and Sociology, University of Chicago, Tony Blair, Former Prime Minister, Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Bill Gates, Co-Chair and Trustee, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Thorsten Heins, President and CEO, BlackBerry, Lisa Ling, Host, “Our America”, and Al Gore, Former Vice President of the United States of America.

Dr. Ozcan will speak on the ‘Bioscience Discoveries That Will Blow Your Mind Panel’ to address some of the most groundbreaking bioscience breakthroughs in the last century, including the technologies emerging from his research lab at UCLA, currently being commercialized by spin-off Holomic LLC. Dr. Ozcan will be joined by the likes of David Baltimore, Nobel Laureate, Medicine, 1975; Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Biology, California Institute of Technology and Francis Collins, Director, National Institutes of Health on the panel that will take place at the conference on May 1, 2013.

The conference aims at identifying emerging trends, which are widely reported globally by over 150 journalists. With a tagline of “Where the World Connects”, the 16^th Annual Milken Institute 2013 Global Conference has attracted over 3000 attendees from more than 50 nations.

About Holomic
Holomic LLC was formed in 2011 to commercialize advanced BioPhotonics technologies invented at the world-renowned research laboratory of Professor Aydogan Ozcan at UCLA. The technologies include rapid diagnostic test readout; lens free holographic and tomographic microscopy; brightfield and fluorescent microscopy; and flow cytometry. The common thread is cost-effective implementations on cellphones or other lightweight portable platforms for applications in medical diagnostics and global health monitoring. (www.holomic.com )

About the Milken Institute
A nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank, the Milken Institute believes in the power of capital markets to solve urgent social and economic challenges. Its mission is to improve lives around the world by advancing innovative economic and policy solutions that create jobs, widen access to capital and enhance health. (www.milkeninstitute.org)

Aydogan Ozcan of the University of California Los Angeles is being recognized with the Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award, presented by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. Ozcan’s lab has developed new devices that will provide access to medical tests in resource-poor countries, including a cellphone-based microscope with applications such as diagnosing malaria.

BELLINGHAM, Washington, USA – 27 December 2012 — Aydogan Ozcan, associate professor, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), has been awarded the Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award by SPIE, the international society for optics and photonics. The award recognizes his seminal contributions to computational imaging, sensing and bio-photonics technologies impacting telemedicine and global health challenges.

“Dr. Ozcan is clearly one of the most innovative biophotonics researchers that I have met during the last decade and he stands out as truly exceptional with regards to clear-sightedness in research, ingenuity of approach, effectiveness in completion of the research projects and publication record,” said Bahram Jalali, Northrop Grumman Endowed Chair and Professor, UCLA. “His work has already been published in the most prestigious academic journals, and has resulted in more than 20 licensed patents as well as several major international awards; and therefore the impact of his work is evident.”

Ozcan provided an overview of his lab’s work in a recent video interview with the SPIE Newsroom.

Ozcan is an SPIE Fellow, and has authored numerous papers for SPIE symposia. He has served as a program committee member for SPIE Photonics West since 2009. He was honored with the SPIE Early Career Achievement Award in 2011.

Ozcan will receive the award on 2 February during the BiOS Hot Topics session at SPIE Photonics West in San Francisco. He will be the first recipient of the award, established in 2012.

The Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award is presented annually for extraordinary achievements in biophotonics technology development that show strong promise or potential impact in biology, medicine, and biomedical optics. The award targets achievements that span disciplines and may include elements of basic research, technology development, and clinical translation.

SPIE presents several yearly awards that recognize outstanding individual and team technical accomplishments and meritorious service to the Society, and invites nominations from the community. Nominations may be made through 1 October of any given year and are considered active for three years from the submission date. Visit SPIE.org/x1164.xml for instructions and nomination forms.

SPIE is the international society for optics and photonics, a not-for-profit organization founded in 1955 to advance light-based technologies. The Society serves nearly 225,000 constituents from approximately 150 countries, offering conferences, continuing education, books, journals, and a digital library in support of interdisciplinary information exchange, professional growth, and patent precedent. SPIE provided $3.3 million in support of education and outreach programs in 2012.

Holomic LLC, a startup company seeking to commercialize a groundbreaking technology developed at UCLA that turns simple cell phones into powerful microscopes has joined UCLA’s on-campus technology incubator program at the California NanoSystems Institute.

The novel medical-diagnostic imaging technology — invented by Aydogan Ozcan, an associate professor of electrical engineering at UCLA’s Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and his students — has the potential to bring better health care and monitoring to impoverished and underserved areas of the globe.

Holomic obtained an exclusive license for this technology from UCLA before joining the incubator program, which was set up three years ago to nurture early-stage research and help speed the commercial translation of new technologies developed at UCLA. At the incubator, Holomic has access to the world-class equipment in the CNSI’s core lab facilities to pursue research-and-development work.

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HRDR provides the performance and  features of many higher-priced and bulkier desktop and handheld readers but on a user-friendly smartphone platform.  It captures the image of the rapid diagnostic test; performs quantitative measurements;  provides accurate and robust test results independent of operator skill and illumination conditions; displays therapeutic information; stores results for later or real-time transfer to local or remote laboratory information systems or electronic health records.  The reader can be configured to accept a wide variety of rapid diagnostic strips or customized for a specific brand.

Smart RDT reader applications implemented  through Holomic’s Cloud Information Service can provide geo-mapping and real-time monitoring of patients and populations, as well as inventory management and quality tracking.  Applications for public health agencies could provide early warning of incipient epidemics and monitor their spread.

The public is invited to visit  us in  Booth 5500 at the AACC Conference and Show in Los Angeles, CA, July 17-90, 2012.  Holomic is exhibiting in the booth of our sister company and software development partner SCC Soft Computer Company.

HRDR will be available for volume deliveries starting in October 2012.  For more information contact Holomic LLC, 1-310-443-2070, sales@holomic.com, www.holomic.com.

Holomic LLC was formed in 2011 to commercialize advanced BioPhotonics technologies invented at the world-renowned research laboratory of Professor Aydogan Ozcan at UCLA.  The technologies include rapid diagnostic test readout;  lensefree holographic and tomographic microscopy; brightfield and fluorescent  microscopy; and flow cytometry.  The common thread is cost-effective implementations on cellphones or other lightweight portable platforms for applications in medical diagnostics and environmental monitoring.

By Matthew Chin

Holomic LLC, a start-up mobile microscopy  company, has given a gift of company equity to the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science.  The company’s computational microscopy technologies were created at the school by Aydogan Ozcan, an associate professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering, and his research group.  Those technologies were then accelerated for commercialization by the school’s Institute for Technology Advancement (ITA).

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In its brief, 4-year history, The Scientist’s annual Top 10 Innovations contest has become a showcase of the coolest life science tools to emerge in the previous year. This year’s installment is no exception. We received more than 65 entries describing exciting new technologies and intriguing methodologies that made their way into labs in 2011.

Our panel of expert judges sifted through the submissions, and the cream of all these innovative products rose to the top. Björn Brembs, from the Freie Universität in Berlin, Medical University of Vienna neuronal cell biologist Michael Kiebler, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory biologist H. Steven Wiley, and Aris Persidis, president of Biovista, a pharmaceutical services company, combined forces to see that the very best of the entries were awarded this year’s prizes.

The Top 10 Innovations of 2011 include a number of the latest advances in microscopy—from a pocket microscope that can be connected to a cell phone’s optics to tools that smash the resolution limitations of traditional scopes, a neat tool to measure light exposure and circadian rhythms, and a first-of-its-kind 360-degree optical imager. Congratulations to all the winners of 2011’s Top 10 Innovations contest, and here’s to the researchers who will use these tools to break new scientific ground and expand our understanding of biology in the months and years to come.

#1 INNOVATION: LUCAS

Diagnosing malaria or other blood-borne illnesses used to require analyzing cell slides under a bulky, costly light microscope—which can be difficult to find in impoverished, remote locations. Enter LUCAS (Lensless, Ultra-wide-field Cell monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging), an easy-to-use, pocket-size holographic microscope that weighs less than 50g, uses inexpensive, off-the-shelf parts, and can be attached to a cell phone’s camera, making it ideal for diagnosing disease in isolated, developing countries.

“In resource-poor areas, you don’t have a hospital or any other infrastructure to conduct all these tests, so if you could simplify all this microscopy you could really have a huge impact,” says the microscope’s inventor, Aydogan Ozcan, an electrical engineer at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

LUCAS, which could cost as little as $10, illuminates cells with an inexpensive light-emitting diode, captures the shadows they cast, and then processes and recreates the image using an algorithm run on a remote computer. The translucent cells cast “textured” shadows that can reveal internal cell features such as malaria parasites. The microscope has submicrometer resolution but can image very large areas, Ozcan says. And because cell phone networks are ubiquitous, “even in an African village you can connect to a supercomputer in LA” to process the images, he adds.

Next year, Karin Nielsen, an infectious disease pediatrician at UCLA, will venture deep into the Amazon to compare the portable microscope’s ability to diagnose malaria with that of old-fashioned microscopy. Nielsen is also testing the microscope’s ability to diagnose anemia, low white blood cell count, and intestinal parasites in stool.

For more information please contact Dr. Neven Karlovac, CEO, nkarlovac@holomic.com, 310-897-2096.

Microskia Inc. was founded in 2009 as a spinoff from UCLA. The mission of the company is to commercialize holographic microscopy and other advanced photonic technologies invented by Professor Aydogan Ozcan at UCLA and his research group.  For more information please contact Dr. Neven Karlovac, CEO, at nkarlovac@microskia.com, 310-897-2096