Identifying risk from nest to table

Ancera
PIPER   Pathogen Detector

Ancera's PIPER™ is helping food producers assess microbial risk across agriculture and livestock food chains.  The compact field deployable system enables pathogen risk predictions, not only of table ready food products - but more significantly - on farms and though-out product processing.

Ancera's unique ferro-fluid driven technology dramatically accelerates detection of single pathogen cells from complex samples - ranging from lettuce to fecal matter.  Up to 12 individual samples, placed into a single cartridge, are assessed in a matter of hours rather than days/weeks.  

The program kicked off with field research and customer research within large scale commercial processing plants and associated labs - timely opportunities as the trips followed major disruptive national food product recalls! 

Interdisciplinary team members rated and down-selected design preferences… Photorealistic conceptual renderings were prepared to better envision emerging aesthetics… Strategy and Graphics were prepared for controls and display GUI (Graphic User Interface) …   

FactorsNY fully designed and engineered the plastic enclosures and mating interfaces and supported Ancera through beta prototypes and production hand-off.

Piper is used in biohazard cleanrooms by technicians in protective gowns, rubber gloves, etc.  The bold armor-like faceplate physically and expressively 'shields' against contamination.  Slick black surfaces, a nod to the empowering ferro-fluid technology, make potentially compromised fingerprints evident and easily wiped clean.  The stark black/white appearance speaks to confident detection of pathogen absence/presence.