For her ability to create a chip that is able to detect various types of cancer inside the patient’s body, Saudi engineer Dana Al-Sulaiman was awarded the “Innovators Under 35” award.
In an interview with the channel Alekhbariya, Eng. Dana explained that the chip, which is made of micro-needles coated with a substance then placed in the skin, has the ability to absorb fluid, and detect cancer biomarkers in an easy and non-invasive way.
The Saudi inventor, who works as an assistant professor of Materials Science and Biotechnology at KAUST added that the reason that prompted her to create this creative breakthrough is the painful process of the traditional way of taking patient samples.
Al-Sulaiman makes a point that the chip she has created is able to reveal various types of cancer, and saves a lot of energy, money and time as well.
In addition, she explained that the innovation was granted an American patent and is currently being developed and produced from sustainable materials at King Abdullah University. This technology is expected to be delivered to doctors in all hospitals soon.
The “Innovators Under 35 Award” is an award given to honour technical experts, male and female researchers, and male and female scientists, who are not more than 35 years old, who have had innovations and research that made qualitative leaps in our contemporary world.
It is known that the award nominations cover a wide range, from biomedicine, computing and communications, energy, materials science, software to transportation, the internet and more.
Each of these selected innovators will be given an opportunity to give a short presentation of their work with a time limit of 3 minutes. Another requirement that must be met to achieve the award is that the candidate must be a citizen or resident of a country located in the Middle East and North African region, or of Arab origin.
