Technological Trailblazers

A group of Canterbury University scientists have developed a machine with the potential to revolutionise everything from counter-terrorism and border control to disease detection. Since the early 1980s, Professor Murray McEwan and his CU team have been working alongside NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the field of SYFT technology – the analysis of ionic chemical reactions in interstellar space. In recent years McEwan has brought the technology’s applications closer to home, using it to detect the invisible smell and taste fingerprints known as volatile organic compounds (VOC’s) in quantities of air or breath. The initial prototype has been downscaled from a four-tonne machine to one the size of a bar fridge, the Voice100. As well as detecting traces of explosives and narcotics, the Voice100 can analyse subsoil for valuable oil and gas reserves, measure pollution levels, and diagnose diseases ranging from diabetes to schizophrenia from a single human breath – all at 100 times the speed of standard technologies.