Chemistry students named national Top 5 Finalists for Invention Detecting Illicit Drugs

October 21, 2024
Categories: Chemistry, College News, Honors & Awards, Research, Student Stories
The student researchers and their advisors stand with the life size poster displaying their photos and the name of their invention.

The UNC Charlotte team of chemistry researchers traveled to Washington D.C. on Oct. 16-18 to attend the Collegiate Inventors Competition awards, after being named national finalists in September.

Finalist teams, consisting of 19 students from nine colleges and universities across the United States, presented their inventions to an esteemed panel of final-round judges composed of the most influential inventors and innovation experts in the nation — National Inventors Hall of Fame Inductees and United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) officials.

Students Naz Fathma Tumpa, a nanoscale chemistry Ph.D. student, and Aiden Hawkins, a senior chemistry major working toward a bachelor’s of science degree, worked with advisors Michael G. Walter and Tyler J. Adams on their invention “Color-Metric Sensing of Amine Compounds for Illicit Drug Detection.” Using a bright, color-changing solution, they can test for drugs like fentanyl, heroin and cocaine, which all contain an amine compound.

The team placed in the national Top 5 of 300 teams and said that they learned a lot in the process of their application and presentation to the panel of final-round judges. The team from the Walter lab was the first-ever group to apply for the competition from UNC Charlotte.

With Tumpa and Hawkins conducting research together, they mark the first-ever finalist team with both a graduate and undergraduate student since the Collegiate Inventors Competition began in 1990. The competition is a program of the National Inventors Hall of Fame and is sponsored by the USPTO.

“It really was an honor seeing Naz and Aiden represent our school in this way and it’s an impressive tribute to the importance of research at UNC Charlotte for students at all levels. They did an interview with PBS news hour for a special series, and were in lots of pictures and video for the competition,” said Walter, professor of chemistry and director of the nanoscale science Ph.D. program. “Naz and Aiden will be permanently recognized as one of the finalist teams for 2024 by the National Inventors Hall Of Fame and their project board will hang in the first floor of the USPTO for the rest year.”

Learn more about the impact of their invention: