A UO science project that came close to winning National Public Radio's 2016 Golden Mole Award for Accidental Brilliance earlier this month is being featured by a National Science Foundation news segment released to coincide with National Agriculture Day on March 15.

The Science Nation story and video focuses on SupraSensor Technologies, a UO technology spinout with a serendipitous beginning. The company, headed by former UO doctoral student Calden Carroll, developed a molecular sensor that monitors nitrate levels of fertilizers used on agricultural fields.

"Only a very small fraction of NSF-sponsored projects get featured on Science Nation, and this story is a perfect one to tell to the general public," said Mike Haley, the Richard M. and Patricia H. Noyes Professor in the UO's Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. "Everyone knows what fertilizer is, and most know what happens if you use too little or two much. Too little leads to low crop yield. Too much gives you algae blooms in lakes and dead zones at river deltas."

The project emerged from ideas generated by Haley and fellow chemistry professor Darren Johnson over coffee a decade ago. Carroll, with initial funding from an NSF grant that covered his salary, was challenged to create a probe that could monitor the movement of chloride through cells.
 
Instead, Carroll's sensor lit up to nitrates, but the implications weren't readily clear. A grant from the NSF-funded Innovation Corps moved the research forward. Carroll, Haley and Johnson then founded SupraSensor Technologies with financial support from the NSF's Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Technology Transfer program. With a $120,000 grant from Oregon BEST, the new company tested 150 of the wireless sensors in agricultural fields.

"For NSF, this is a success story," Haley said. "The Science Nation story clearly illustrates, as correspondent Miles O'Brien says, highly applied science with roots in basic research."

The Science Nation crew, led by O'Brien, a veteran independent journalist who focuses on science and technology, came to the UO to film footage for the segment last September, Johnson said.

"They were particularly interested in focusing on how the basic research got us to the point of commercialization activities," Johnson said. "They shot video on location in research space in the Lewis Integrative Science Building, at the UO's Urban Farm showing the use of the sensor in a field and at SupraSensor headquarters in Eugene's Fertilab Thinkubator."

The coverage is great news for the UO, Haley said. "I knew we would get some good science and nice publications out of the project, but this work has gone much further and has grown more successful than either of us could have imagined. Of course, much of the credit goes to the great graduate and undergraduate students that have worked with us on the sensors project."

Carroll, who serves as president of SupraSensor Technologies, earned his doctorate in chemistry from the UO in 2011.