http://www.spyglassbiosecurity.com () —
Spyglass Biosecurity Inc., a clean technology company focused on
environmental resource management, announced today that the Center for
Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction (CMOP) has appointed the
company as an industry collaborator. Through the collaboration,
Spyglass will provide CMOP with its revolutionary water monitoring
solution, the Environmental Sample Processor (ESP) system, to better
monitor and manage coastal regions in the Pacific Northwest.
The ESP system, Spyglass' flagship product, performs real-time
analysis of water samples from the body of water of interest and
transmits results directly to a centralized laboratory, allowing
scientists to take a deeper look at the health of the water.
"The unique technology in Spyglass' ESP system will play a key role in
helping us study the health of our coastal margins in the Pacific
Northwest," said Antonio M. Baptista, Ph.D. and CMOP director. "The
ESP's ability to analyze microbes directly in the waters of the
estuary will allow us to understand and manage our coastal ecosystems
in a new way."
Because the ESP is able to conduct advanced, automated tests within a
body of water, scientists can simultaneously measure a range of
conditions, allowing them to discover connections between physical,
chemical and biological changes in the water. As part of the
collaboration, Spyglass and CMOP will work in partnership to deploy
the ESP system to monitor the Columbia River estuary within the next
two years. The ESP system will help CMOP scientists obtain a better
understanding of the effects of climate and human activity on coastal
margins, to positively guide outcomes on environmental sustainability,
economic development and public health. CMOP's purchase of the ESP is
made possible through a generous grant from the M. J. Murdock
Charitable Trust.
"Human activity is creating rapid changes in the health of our coastal
waters," said Chris Melancon, Spyglass president and chief executive
officer. "Spyglass recognizes the unique challenges of monitoring and
managing critical water systems and is committed to bringing this
advanced technology to the researchers and managers, such as CMOP, who
will benefit from the real-time, sophisticated information the ESP
system is able to provide."
Spyglass joins an elite group of CMOP industry collaborators,
including Sharp Laboratories of America, Intel Corporation, WET Labs,
CombiMatrix Corporation, and Translume. The collaboration with CMOP,
which is funded by the National Science Foundation's Science and
Technology Center program, also extends the National Science
Foundation's (NSF's) investment in Spyglass. In June of 2010, the NSF
Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) program granted funding for five
ESP systems to be deployed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
(WHOI) to monitor red tide algal blooms in the Gulf of Maine.
About Spyglass Biosecurity, Inc.Spyglass is a clean technology company
focused on revolutionizing water quality monitoring and management.
Spyglass' flagship product, the Environmental Sample Processor system,
or ESP, is a portable water analysis system that provides scientists
and researchers the first and only automated way to perform advanced
water quality tests outside of a laboratory. Because the Spyglass
platform conducts tests directly in the body of water and not in the
lab, researchers can simultaneously measure a range of conditions,
helping them to discover connections between physical, chemical and
biological changes in the water. These connections are extremely
important for gaining a clear picture of the overall health of a water
system, as well as monitoring to detect and mitigate hazards.
Spyglass' ESP system is built upon patented technology developed
through 20 years of scientific research by the Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute (MBARI) and Lawrence Livermore National Labs, with
support from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA. Spyglass
has the exclusive world-wide license to the ESP and its advanced
technology from MBARI.
About CMOP The Center for Coastal Margin Observation & Prediction
(CMOP), a multi-institutional center hosted at Oregon Health & Science
University, is a National Science Foundation Science and Technology
Center. CMOP is creating a new paradigm for conducting coastal-margin
science. The approach is anticipatory rather than reactive, and is
based on the emerging power of structured integrations of information,
methods and people. We call these integrations "collaboratories." The
center represents a large multi-institutional partnership.