SALT LAKE CITY — A University of Utah electrical and computer engineering professor has been named a finalist for prize money in an international competition to develop innovations in rapid testing for COVID-19.
Massood Tabib-Azar's rapid test is a small electronic device that can detect the presence of SARS-CoV-2 through a user's breath or a drop of saliva and delivers results in less than a minute.
Tabib-Azar is one of 10 finalists in the Open Innovation Track for the XPRIZE Rapid COVID Testing competition. The rapid testing contest has a track for tests that utilize PCR, antigen detection and other traditional methods, while the Open Innovation Track is for nontraditional tests whose "approaches demonstrated high potential for impactful screening solutions," the XPRIZE website says.