Dolomite’s Productizing Science Competition 2013 offers scientists a chance to turn microfluidic innovations into successful products.

Royston, UK (1st October 2013) – Microfluidic specialist Dolomite is now taking entries for this year’s Productizing Science® Competition. After the huge success of last year's competition, the company is once again looking for innovative microfluidics concepts to turn them into commercial reality.

The Productizing Science Competition was created in 2012 to help bridge the gap between scientific innovation and commercial success. Offering a chance to translate your microfluidic invention into a successful product, the popularity of the competition lies in Dolomite’s track record of taking early stage technologies and turning them into market-leading products.

Backed by Dolomite’s invaluable commercial expertise and in-depth understanding of the international microfluidics market, this exciting competition gives you the chance to develop your idea into a commercially successful product and share in the rewards. The winning entry will benefit from the company’s outstanding R&D capabilities, helping to take the concept or prototype through to a market-ready product.

Left: Original prototype of the droplet sample. Right: Dolomite's new Mitos Dropix droplet-on-demand system. Images courtesy of Dolomite

In collaboration with one of last year’s winner Drop-Tech Ltd, a company formed from an academic collaboration between Imperial College London and The University of Cambridge, Dolomite has already developed Mitos Dropix, an innovative droplet system providing a flexible and automated solution for droplet-on-demand applications. Liisa van Vliet, Managing Director of Drop-Tech, commented: “In a university environment, finding the time to convert an invention into a product is often difficult. Dolomite knows and understands microfluidic droplet technologies and had the engineering expertise to productize the solution.” The novel system which features a patented droplet "picking" technology was developed in just under a year and Dolomite is already taking orders for delivery in the beginning of 2014.

The second winner in 2012 was Dr. Jeff Martin at Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research in Cambridge, MA, who has developed an integrated microscale analysis system for proteomic studies involving limited amounts of cells. The system allows detailed analysis of the proteins contained in samples of only 5,000 cells, which is far less than typical current requirements for 1,000,000 cell samples. Dolomite is now developing a disposable sample system for sample handling and processing, for use by all scientists working in this field.

Entries for this year's competition close on the 25th of November 2013, so if you have discovered some key science but are struggling to work out how to productize on the idea – either financially, technically or commercially – then enter now! For more information, visit www.dolomite-microfluidics.com/en/design/competition