University of Auckland scientist invents revolutionary method of safeguarding our waterways

Led by Faculty of Science Research Fellow Dr. Alex Risos, the team is investigating ways to rapidly and cost efficiently test water to detect waterborne contaminations using lasers.

Alex believes that that clean water is a basic human right, and his dream is that it is accessible for everyone.

“Unfortunately, we cannot help polluting our water sources, and we pay the price in sickness and death. Over a hundred thousand New Zealanders get sick from drinking dirty water each year. It is a serious global issue and 1 billion people in this world lack access to safe drinking water”.

“Sensing is the first step towards improvement in this sector. In order to have widespread high frequent water testing, we need to change at least three things: a) cut down the few days testing times to seconds, b) reducing the high costs to a fraction of what it is today, and c) improve on the accuracy so that we can quantify and qualify bacteria, protozoa, microplastics and various dissolved chemicals including phosphates and nitrates at ppb levels,” he said.

The Risos Group, which includes Alex Risos, Cather Simpson, Gillian Lewis, Claude Aguergaray, Michel Nieuwoudt, Kevin Simon and many undergraduates from the physics, chemistry and engineering department, are working towards this vision and won the Velocity Innovation Challenge to further work on the concept of a $15,000 funding opportunity for the start-up RisosEnterprises Ltd.

Alex completed his PhD in physics at the Victoria University of Wellington, he moved to the University of Auckland in 2017 and since works within the multidisciplinary Photon Factory, a state-of-the-art pulsed laser research facility, for research into 'Drinking-water pathogen monitoring in real-time.'

“I believe that, if we work hard enough on one challenge, we can solve anything. All together. What we can do today to overcome this challenge is developing technology that can tell us whether water is safe to use. With the help of our $1m MBIE Smart Ideas grant, we have developed a laser-based instrumentation for end-users to follow this dream and change the world’s status quo.”

More information: a.risos@auckland.ac.nz or RisosEnterprises@pm.me

Visit the Photon Factory website.