Research Progress
Auckland bioengineer wins top science prize
Post: 2014-09-29 15:29  View:1393

Auckland bioengineering scientist, Dr Ben O’Brien has won the 2013 Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize with his success in converting cutting edge research into a high-technology start-up business.

 

Along with fellow ABI graduate Dr Todd Gisby and ABI Associate Professor Iain Anderson, Dr OBrien formed a company earlier this year – StretchSense Limited.

 

Building on work done in the Biomimetics Lab, StretchSense has pioneered the development of small, light and soft, stretchy sensors that can measure movement of the human body and transmit the information to a smart phone app.

 

The company is now selling the technology to global customers in healthcare, rehabilitation, sports training, animation and gaming.

 

Dr Ben OBrien with the award winning StretchSense sensors

 

“Our sensors are so precise and reliable that they can be used for anything you want to measure,” says Ben. “One example is rehabilitation where a healthcare professional wants to track something like how an injury is improving over time.”

 

Ben plans to use his prize money to take the technology to the next level by developing an intuitive skin-tight under garment that can monitor and interpret body language, gestures and posture to accurately read the emotions of the wearer.

 

His goal is to create an ‘emotionally aware’ body suit that he expects will produce a range of practical technologies that can be commercialised by his company.

 

The Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize is worth $200,000, with $150,000 of the money to be used for further research. The prize is described as being for “an outstanding emerging scientist undertaking research in New Zealand”, for either their PhD research, or research undertaken within 5 years of having completed their PhD.

 

“Huge investment is going into clothing and accessories that have technology embedded in them, (such as the Google glass wearable computer),” says Ben, “but if those portable products are not able to pick up non-verbal messages and be sensitive to people’s emotions it could be disastrous.

 

StretchSense was spun out of the Biomimetics Laboratory and Ben continues to work at the Lab as an Honorary Research Fellow while also being CEO of his fledgling company.

 

His field of expertise is electro-active polymers, materials that are designed to change in size or shape when stimulated by an electric field. He invented a dielectric elastomer switch which allows the technology to be directly embedded into artificial muscle devices, giving them life-like reflexes.

 

Ben built a computer to demonstrate the capability which shows that artificial muscles can be made to ‘think’. It was a feature exhibit at the Big Data exhibition, held earlier this year at the National Library of New Zealand.

 

Ben says StretchSense’s point of difference is the ability to customise sensors to the needs of the customer, providing them with “everything they need to take the technology and put it straight into their product”.

 

“This is a boom time for soft sensing and we are riding the wave”, he says.   “A lot of academics invent great things, but relatively few actually quit their job and have a go at commercialising them. I want to create high-tech jobs that deliver back to the economy.”

 

In addition to the four founders, StretchSense employs two full time staff, and three part time.

 

Ben says receiving the Prime Minister’s MacDiarmid Emerging Scientist Prize is a great honour. “I don’t want to be someone who talked about it, but didn’t do it. I am determined to deliver good results from the prize money”, he says.

 

“The recognition is also important. At StretchSense, we’ve gone out on a limb to push our research out into the world and it’s fantastic to get support from the Government for doing that.”

 

Ben graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering in Mechatronics with First Class Honours from the University of Auckland in 2008 and immediately commenced his Doctor of Philosophy studies in the Biomimetics Laboratory of the ABI. His PhD research was supervised by Dr Iain Anderson, Associate Professor Shane Xie and Dr Emilio Calius (IRL) and was supported by a Bright Future Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarship.

 

More Info. Please visit http://www.abi.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/news/articles/2013/11/18/auckland-bioengineer-wins-top-science-prize.html

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