24
Valorisation
Physics
Award-winning start-ups The Academic Startup Competition challenges universities and scientific institutions to nominate their best spin-off start-ups and join the race for the 10 Dutch Pioneering Innovations from Science. Among this year’s winners are two Amsterdam Science Park-based companies, both founded on the results of scientific research done in Amsterdam.
↓ Figure 1 Kepler product Provided by Kepler Vision Technologies.
Confocal.nl
→ Kepler Vision Technologies’ customers are elderly care centres, mental health care centres, home care organisations and hospitals. Due to the aging population, the management of these centres has to deal with both an increasing demand for care as well as a rapidly decreasing supply of care labour. Kepler develops computer vision and machine-learning analysis software that ‘looks’ in videos. (see figure 1) The Kepler Vision Engine is the world’s first to recognise human body language (defensive, thoughtful, aggressive) and human activities (lying, drinking, eating, wandering). Employing these capabilities, the Engine helps care workers by keeping an extra eye on patients – an eye that never tires and that is always alert. For instance:
→ Confocal.nl is a young Dutch company based in Amsterdam Science Park, aiming to change the microscopy industry with a microscope upgrade module based on the rescan invention. The upgrade module of Confocal.nl turns any wide-field microscope into a confocal microscope (re-scan confocal microscope - RCM) with 40% improved resolution and increased sensitivity as compared to other confocal systems.
• It releases care givers from administrative burdens as the vision-based software builds up records of patient behaviour history. This way, the software can generate objective and accurate health reports when needed. ↓ Figure 2 COS7 cell, immunostained for alpha-tubulin AlexaFluor647. Image courtesy of Andreas Kurz from the Sauer Laboratory at the University of Würzburg.
Detecting ghosts in the Mediterranean
Kepler Vision Technologies
• It allows care givers to spend their time providing care, instead of having to behave as security guards. To that end, the software generates an alarm when a patient has fallen on the floor and needs help or when a patient wanders off.
This way, the Kepler software makes care providers more productive, and allows them to do the work they really love: Providing care. Another advantage - in case of aggressive patients with health care problems – it that the software also keeps an eye on the security and safety of care givers. Kepler is a spin-off company from the Faculty of Science from the University of Amsterdam and was founded by Harro Stokman.
25
The RCM upgrade is an ideal solution for small labs with limited budget but demanding tasks, and an excellent add-on for imaging facilities to increase their imaging capacity. (see figure 2) It is also a sustainable and cost-friendly solution, as it allows re-using of wide-field microscopes already available in the lab. RCM is available in two flavours – for visible light spectrum (RCM-VIS), and recently also for near-infra-red spectrum (RCM-NIR). The RCM-NIR is the first point-scanning confocal available for detection in infra-red. Confocal.nl sells RCM upgrades and full imaging systems directly or through distributor networks all over the world. Today, the RCM can be found in laboratories in the Netherlands, Belgium, UK, Germany, Poland, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Hungary, China, Taiwan, India, Egypt and Canada. In three years since its founding in 2016, Confocal.nl has grown to a team of 8, arranged in Sales and R&D activities. RCM upgrade units are produced by Hittech Multin. Confocal.nl is led by the management team consisting of the two founders, Peter Drent (CEO; Sales & Marketing) and Erik Manders (CTO; Product development & R&D), and Mariliis TarkDame (COO; Daily operations, HR and grant management). The re-scan was invented at the University of Amsterdam in the research team of Erik Manders, funded by NWO-TTW (formerly STW). Confocal.nl was founded with an investment by UvA Ventures/Holding and received an additional financial injection from Value Creation Capital in 2018. Ω
PAUL DE JONG is programme leader of the neutrino group at Nikhef and professor in experimental particle physics at the Institute of Physics, UvA
“KM3NeT will shine light on the neutrino mass mystery”
→ Figure Artist impression of KM3NeT, with lightsensitive detectors assembled in digital optical modules, attached to a grid of vertical strings connected to anchors on the sea floor. On the back cover, you can see a photo of a string about to be lowered into the sea.
→ Every second, Earth is bombarded by hundreds of billions of neutrinos. These fundamental subatomic particles, closely related to electrons but without electric charge, are created in the decay of other, unstable particles, for example in stars like our Sun. Despite being one of the most abundant types of particles in the universe, many properties of these ‘ghost particles’ are poorly understood. They rarely interact with other matter and are therefore hard to detect in sufficient quantities. Large detectors would help in collecting more neutrinos, and therefore the KM3NeT (cubic kilometre neutrino telescope) project is equipping a significant volume of water in the Mediterranean Sea with light-sensitive instruments for neutrino detection. Neutrinos come in three different types, or ‘flavours’. It has been observed that neutrinos can transform from one flavour to another, a phenomenon known as neutrino oscillations. This is only possible if neutrinos have mass, but this mass is so small that until the discovery of neutrino oscillations it was believed that neutrinos were massless. (An example of a massless particle is a photon, a quantum of light). The exact neutrino masses and their relation to the three fla-
vours are unknown. KM3NeT will shine further light on the neutrino mass mystery by measuring neutrinos that are produced by cosmic rays colliding with air molecules in the atmosphere, and by studying their oscillation patterns as a function of neutrino energy and direction. Neutrinos are also valuable messengers of information about violent events that happen far away in our Universe: colliding neutron stars, supernovae, or matter falling into black holes. The neutrino information on the nature, density and temperature of matter in such events complements the information carried by electromagnetic waves (light, gamma rays, radio waves) or gravitational waves, in a new exciting field called multi-messenger astronomy. KM3NeT will search for sources of energetic cosmic neutrinos and correlate this information in real time with that provided by telescopes and gravitational wave interferometers. Neutrinos have the advantage that they are not absorbed by cosmic dust or gas nor affected by magnetic fields. KM3NeT detects neutrinos by measuring the so-called Cerenkov light emitted by charged particles that result from collisions of neutrinos with seawater molecules. At two locations in the Mediterranean
Sea, at depths of more than 2.5 km below the surface, in total darkness, the KM3NeT team is anchoring a grid of vertical strings with sensitive light-detectors to the seabed. The detectors are photomultiplier tubes, which can detect very small amounts of light; they are arranged in ball-shaped digital optical modules or DOMs, with 18 DOMs attached to each 200-700 metre-long string. The strings are connected to a station on the shore that collects the data. From the arrival time and direction of the Cherenkov light, the path of individual neutrinos can be reconstructed on a computer. The KM3NeT collaboration consists of some 40 institutes and universities in 12 countries. Nikhef has played a central role in the design and manufacture of the detector, electronics and software. At the moment, five strings have been deployed, but the detector will grow fast and should consist, in five years’ time, of 345 strings. KM3NeT will also be a research infrastructure beyond neutrino physics: sea science and marine biology will benefit from the deep-sea monitoring of temperature, salinity, pressure, currents, bioluminescence and sound. Ω