Manchester students scoop multiple awards for alcohol detection patch
24 Nov 2016
A team of students from the University of Manchester has been awarded a gold medal and the ‘Best Computational Model’ award for its alcohol detection patch at this year’s iGEM international world championship in synthetic biology.
The ‘AlcoPatch’ is designed to detect alcohol in sweat, and contains a colour patch that indicates the level of alcohol consumed by the wearer.
The team hopes it will be used as an “affordable, personal intoxication awareness tool” that is capable of testing blood alcohol levels.
“In January when we first came up with this idea, we were brainstorming, and as we are surrounded by students, we thought it could be a useful tool,” said team member Sathya Darmalinggam, who suggested people could use the patch for knowing if it’s safe to drive.
“One of the great achievements of the iGEM team this year was that they talked extensively to the Manchester community to find out how their project could make a real difference, and they brought this information back to the laboratory to decide which experiments to do,” added Darmalinggam.
The team was made up of six biologists, two engineers, a maths student and a linguistics student.
