perhaps the most interesting thing I’ve dealt with in my administrative job so far

This BREAKTHROUGH by Dr. Hassan Azzazy from our Department of Chemistry.

Hassan and his team figured out a way to use gold nanoparticles to make an extremely cheap test for hepatitis C. Egypt has a severe hepatitis C problem, with a 14% infection rate from ages 15-60, way above the 1%-2% norm in the region. (No one’s even exactly sure why Egypt has an infection rate that high.)

The current test costs $78, well out of the range of poor Egyptians. The new test will cost around $7.

Better yet, there are other diagnostic applications for this method, which is both ingenious and accurate.

Congratulations to Hassan and his team of researchers. When I took this job, I didn’t realize how many practical ideas were being generated on campus.

When there’s a potential patent on campus, it runs through the committee I chair. We’ve had quite a few others that are still in the legal pipeline.