Along with the great migration, please follow me here from now on:

RT @loicaroyer: What happened?.I am holding a piece of Mars with @LebelPaul at @FutureJurvetson 's private Space Museum🚀, with @donttrythis….

What do you want to know?.

None of this could have happened without the amazing BioE team @czbiohub, who helped develop and build the devices, and @cristinamtato 's insight and backing of the project.

I hope that this milestone allows us (and hopefully others) to continue bringing much-needed technological advances into the global health arena, where access to centralized lab services is limited or non-existing.

The study was able to confirm a high rate of past exposure to SARS-CoV-2, including excellent correlation with self-reported survey data. This type of data could be used to inform policy in global public health settings, or on an individual basis.

Thanks to an amazing effort by @chrfbd staff and volunteers, they were able to measure antibodies against both S and N SARS-CoV-2 proteins using our devices and the split-luciferase assay developed by @susanna_elledge .

In collaboration with @senjutisaha @chrfbd , we used the devices in a pilot serology study in Mirzapur, Bangladesh. The devices were packed up in weatherproof containers and shipped, arriving in good working order!

As a result, we were able to build a fleet of temperature-insensitive devices, all with matched absolute sensitivity. They could be distributed to different places and perform the same, and could detect less than an attomole of luciferase.

The effect was very linear and repeatable. We calibrated the amount they glowed and subtracted it in real time, using a push-button calibration.

We also discovered something new along the way. Like an LED, it turns out that the sensors themselves emit light (at very low levels). While the shutters were open, the sensors could "see themselves in the mirror" and detect their own glow. With the shutters closed, it was gone.

If worked really well. In fact, without shutters, the background signal gets worse and worse the longer you expose (uphill sloping lines on the right plot). With shutters, it gets better and better, even with changing temperature (downward sloping lines on the right).

What other portable systems lacked was not sensitivity, but stability. Like a blurry camera image with a long exposure, you can't make precise measurements if the baseline signal is in motion. Instead, we used shutters to take many short exposures and average them together.

Despite the simplicity, it was not an easy task. To approach the performance of a cooled PMT-based instrument, we needed to identify ways we could squeeze more performance out of small, low-cost sensors, while being portable and rugged.

Very proud to have reached this milestone. After being called to action by @cristinamtato who identified the need, we dove into development of a handheld version of a high-end benchtop luminometer.

RT @czbiohub: We had fun hosting @natepodcasts & his family at the Biohub. In his first episode on Biohub's work, he talked to @LebelPaul &….

Thanks for stopping by @natepodcasts, it was a special treat getting to chat with you. Keep up the great work!.

And of course, none of this would have been possible without our amazing director, Rafael. His guidance and support have enabled us to do our best work. He has fostered the ideal environment for our BioE team to succeed.

I look forward to supporting this effort and working with the team in Uganda to evaluate our new tool. Finally, thank you to @czbiohub and especially Joe DeRisi for the ongoing support, backing this project.

We still have lots of work to do, but by partnering with @IDRC_Uganda and @UCSF , we have the right tools and people in place to evaluate this idea and then eventually take it to the next level.

I'm incredibly proud of this milestone: we took a proof of concept and turned it into an automated, deployable system. Leading this project has been a repeating cycle of facing obstacles, then being blown away by the team's innovation and tenacity, knocking them all down.