Diversey (a Solenis Company), the Seeker for this Innocentive Challenge, is seeking novel technologies capable of providing objective, rapid, and actionable verification of cleanliness in professional cleaning environments.
Current methods for cleanliness verification typically rely on visual inspection, ATP testing, and/or microbiological sampling and culturing. While these methods have value, they often provide incomplete coverage, require significant time, lack species-level specificity, or fail to demonstrate cleanliness across larger areas.
We are seeking breakthrough approaches that can rapidly establish either:
- Cleanliness of large areas such as an entire room, or
- Species/strain-specific verification of microbes present through a surface sampling approach
Rapid identification means under thirty minutes. An ideal solution would combine both aspects and be able to assess the cleanliness of a large area, identifying microbes present with species/strain specificity.
We are not seeking conventional approaches already widely adopted by industry, such as ATP swab testing. We are interested in genuinely novel concepts, technologies, sensing modalities, biological approaches, analytical methodologies, or combinations thereof. Submissions are therefore expected to be early Technology Readiness Level (TRL).
Submissions of established emerging techniques that are already receiving significant commercial attention, such as hyperspectral imaging for larger areas or “lab-on-a-chip PCR testing” for species-specific identification are only of interest at TRL 6 of higher.
Awards:- $10,000 USD
Deadline:- 21-09-2026
