IARPA Awards QBI a Contract to Develop Novel Sensing Capabilities

The Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA) — the advanced research and development arm of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence — recently launched a program to develop new innovations for tackling threats and advances inherent within the rapidly changing biointelligence and biosecurity landscapes.

The Biointelligence and Biosecurity for the Intelligence Community (B24IC) program represents the Intelligence Community’s (IC) latest investment in research that pushes the boundaries of our biointelligence and biosecurity understanding and technologies. QBI was one of nine groups selected under a recent competitive Broad Agency Announcement, with the goal of our project being to develop new sensing technology to detect and characterize highly-sensitive biomolecules and biological targets of interest.

QBI will be pursuing a new nanobody-based approach to agnostic sensing of water for both known and unexpected threats to safety. You can read more about this program here.

QBI selected as winner of EPA's Water Toxicity Challenge

EPA and six federal and local cosponsoring organizations announce the Phase 1 winners of the Water Toxicity Sensor Challenge, designed to stimulate the advancement of novel toxicity-based sensors for water monitoring.

Monitoring the increasing number of pollutants in source waters is an ongoing concern for water treatment systems and water resource managers. Pesticides, heavy metals, personal care products, natural toxins such as those from cyanobacteria, and a host of other organic and inorganic chemical pollutants and their products all can increase toxicity in water.

Current methods for detecting and identifying many of these contaminants are expensive, time-consuming, and require the use of specialized laboratories. The numbers of sensors, instruments, tests, labs, personnel, and other costs can become an economic burden for water system managers and water resource managers. If the identity of the potential contaminant is unknown, this process becomes even more complex and cost prohibitive.

QBI’s current biosensor platform can detect a suite of contaminants including arsenic, cadmium, iron, lead, manganese, mercury, copper, zinc, uranium, nitrate, nitrite, phosphate, and ammonium. Ongoing efforts at QBI are developing capabilities for PFAS, pesticides, opioids, and pharmaceuticals including antibodies. See more about QBI’s sensor here.

Read more here.

QBI receives Phase I SBIR Award from the USDA for Pesticide Detection

The Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs at the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) offer competitively awarded grants to qualified small businesses to support high quality research related to important scientific problems and opportunities in agriculture that could lead to significant public benefits.

QBI was awarded a USDA small business grant to develop a biosensor a continuous water sensor that can detect and quantify the concentration of pesticides in real-time. The project will aim to integrate nanobody technology with an existing customizable biosensor platform (the Qube) that uses engineered microbial sensor strains paired with microfluidic technology to continuously monitor water for common contaminants and other agriculturally relevant targets (e.g. nitrate). In previous work, we have developed this platform to quickly and accurately measure the concentration of heavy metals and nutrients in water continuously for over a month without requiring subjective interpretation, extensive calibration, or regular oversight. A simple monthly cartridge and media swap enables the sensor to run indefinitely, reporting the toxin concentrations to a mobile friendly portal.

The work proposed here will develop a novel nanobody-based approach to expand the functionality of this sensor platform, which will enable the detection of almost any type of contaminant that can be recognized by a nanobody. That is, while the project leverages an existing water sampling platform along with a computational backbone for analyzing cellular responses in real-time, the development of an innovative approach to nanobody-based biosensor strain development will be transformative and broadly impactful. We will begin by developing the capability to detect chlorpyrifos as proof of principal in Phase I, with a plan expand to other pesticides and emerging contaminants as well as perform field validations of the platform with relevant end-users in Phase II.

DOE Awards QBI a Phase IIB SBIR Award for Sensor Software Development

QBI was awarded a DOE small business grant to create a user-friendly CloudLab prototype that allows users to interact with our sensor using web-based tools. This software with integrate with the Qube, our customizable biosensor platform that uses fluorescent microbial sensor strains to continuously monitor water for nutrient contaminants, including nitrate, nitrite, ammonium, and phosphorus. In Phase IIB, we are working with the SLAC Groundwater Quality SFA to deploy our sensor for real-time environmental monitoring as well as with Qualitas Health to demonstrate the value our sensor can bring to a process control system for commercial algae operations.

The mission of the Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program is to support transformative science and scientific user facilities to achieve a predictive understanding of complex biological, earth, and environmental systems for energy and infrastructure security and resilience. Gaining a predictive understanding of biological processes will enable design and reengineering of microbes and plants for improved energy resilience and sustainability, including improved biofuels and bio-products, improved carbon storage capabilities, and controlled biological transformation of materials such as nutrients and contaminants in the environment.

EPA Awards QBI a Phase I SBIR Award for Agricultural Water Reuse

QBI was awarded an EPA small business grant to develop an agricultural water reuse system by combining a state-of-the-art real-time nutrient sensor with an artificial intelligence platform that will incorporate multiple streams of data to provide a "drop in" technology that can integrate with almost any type of low-input water reuse technology to enable simple, affordable, and sustainable water reclamation for a broad range of agricultural applications

The mission of the EPA’s SBIR Program is to support small businesses nationwide to develop technologies that provide sustainable solutions for environmental issues. These SBIR Phase I recipients are creating technologies that support clean and safe water, air quality and climate, homeland security, sustainable materials management/circular economy, safer chemicals, and risk assessment.

Read about the QBI sensor platform in a KPBS news story.

KPBS visited QBI’s San Diego laboratory to learn more about our sensor platform and how we harness synthetic biology to engineer bacteria to detect toxins in water. The advantages of this platform are that it can run continuously, self-calibrate, and can provide information on a large number of contaminants at the same time.  

Read the story here.

DOE Awards QBI a Phase II SBIR Award for Nutrient Sensing

QBI was awarded a DOE small business grant to develop a customizable biosensor platform that uses fluorescent microbial sensor strains to continuously monitor water for nutrient contaminants, including nitrate, nitrite, ammonium, and phosphorus. In Phase II, we are working with the SLAC Groundwater Quality SFA to deploy our sensor for real-time environmental monitoring as well as with Commercial Algae Management to demonstrate the value our sensor can bring to a “smart dosing” system for commercial algae operations.

The mission of the Biological and Environmental Research (BER) program is to support transformative science and scientific user facilities to achieve a predictive understanding of complex biological, earth, and environmental systems for energy and infrastructure security and resilience. Gaining a predictive understanding of biological processes will enable design and reengineering of microbes and plants for improved energy resilience and sustainability, including improved biofuels and bio-products, improved carbon storage capabilities, and controlled biological transformation of materials such as nutrients and contaminants in the environment.

QBI receives Phase I SBIR Award from the NIEHS

The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences funds Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Research (STTR) grants. These SBIR/STTR grants help small businesses develop innovative applications to translate and communicate environmental health research to improve public health.

QBI was awarded an NIEHS small business grant, which aim to foster the commercialization of innovative environmental technologies for detecting and remediating hazardous substances. These technologies have the potential of protecting health through preventing harmful exposures. As part of this program, QBI is developing a biosensor that uses synthetic microbial sensor strains that fluoresce in response to specific toxins to continuously monitor water for contamination. The platform will substantially improve upon currently available technologies for toxin detection, making monitoring more affordable, continuous, and field-deployable.

QBI awarded Arsenic Sensor prize from the Bureau of Reclamation

Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman announced that five private sector and citizen solvers shared a prize competition purse of $50,000 for their submissions of concepts to improve arsenic measurement technologies in water.

"Current analytical methods are suitable for ensuring regulatory compliance, but there remains a need for rapid, low-cost monitoring of arsenic," Commissioner Burman said. "These selected ideas are a positive step forward to better understand and manage water quality, potentially opening up more usable supplies for the West and the country. We look forward to seeing the application of these proposed solutions."

Stage 1 of the arsenic sensor prize competition sought concepts for rapidly, accurately, and cost-effectively measuring arsenic in water through improved sensor technologies. Responses were judged, and winners each received a cash prize of $10,000. To advance these concepts, Reclamation will be hosting stage 2 of the competition, which seeks working prototypes of innovative arsenic sensing technologies.

QBI receives $2M from CEC for biofuel production facility.

The California Energy Commission supports California-based biofuel production facilities that can sustainably produce low carbon transportation fuels through their release of a grant solicitation entitled “Pilot-Scale and Commercial-Scale Advanced Biofuels Production Facilities” under the Alternative and Renewable Fuel and Vehicle Technology Program.  ARFVTP is a competitive grant program that aims at helping California meet its energy, clean air and climate change goals. 

QBI has received $2M through this program to develop a biofuels production facility at the Fiscalini Dairy in Modesto, CA.  The facility will purify the biogas from the on-site digesters to pure biomethane, compress this for vehicle use, and feed the carbon dioxide that is removed from the biogas to algae ponds.  Algae biomass will be used on site as an animal feed.  The goal of the project is to make 500 DGE of CNG per day and to demonstrate that algae can serve as a nutrient-rich feed for dairy cows.