In the grocery store or on your kitchen counter, it’s hard to tell if that chicken’s still fresh. Until you get sick, that is. But thanks to one big invention by URI professors and students, and a partnership with a food safety company, you may never have to wonder about that again.
A breakthrough in URI’s 10-year study of thermochromic pigments, this work may protect millions of consumers from spoiled food at the grocery store and at home.
As a student, pharmacy major Nadia Archambault, ’08, worked with Chemistry Professors Brett Lucht and William Euler to develop a temperature-sensitive polymer that can be added to ink used for barcodes on food packaging. When the packaged food reaches a temperature that could create a problem, the polymer detects pathogen levels in the food, turns the barcode bright red, and renders it un-scannable at the checkout counter. A breakthrough in URI’s 10-year study of thermochromic pigments, this work may protect millions of consumers from spoiled food at the grocery store and at home.
In fact, soon after of URI’s invention, a private company that had previously struggled to develop a barcode capable of detecting pathogens in food, found URI’s polymer to be the perfect solution to the global problem of food safety. That company embarked in a partnership with URI to create what is now trademarked and patented as “The Food Sentinel System.”
Now a pharmacist and chemistry professor, Nadia never imagined she’d graduate with both a degree and a patent that could save lives. Maybe you’ve got an invention just waiting to happen at URI, too.