Anavasi Diagnostics

Professor Barry Lutz had been working on point-of-care testing devices to diagnose flu and HIV. Bob Atkinson, a doctoral candidate in bioengineering in the Lutz Lab, was ready to take on new challenges after spending 20 years as a senior software engineer at Microsoft. Minh Duong came in as a product development engineer to help make the device “real.” In less than a year from the founding of the company in August 2020, the AscencioDx detector and test kits were ready for clinical trials. The resulting device is unlike anything on the market today. The AscencioDx COVID-19 Molecular Detector. Fast. Affordable. Accurate. A rugged little instrument that can be used to run thousands of tests, giving highly accurate molecular results in about half an hour. Its design represents the best of sophisticated mechanical and bioengineering, yet it is easy to use.