HP Innovation Journal Issue 09: Spring 2018 | Page 66

Employee Profile Anita Rogacs Principal Research Scientist, 3D Print and Adjacencies Lab, HP Anita Rogacs leads the HP Labs’ Life Sciences Sense Research Program, which is home to research efforts in areas of plasmonics, Raman spectroscopy, analytical chemistry, molecular biology, and machine learning. What projects are you currently working on? I lead a team charged with applying and advancing HP’s expertise in Nano- and Micro-Electro-Mechanical System (NEMS/MEMS) manufacturing in the field of biochemical sensing and analysis in an effort to make testing and diag- nosis faster, cheaper and more easily conducted on the field. This work has the potential to benefit a number of major industries, including healthcare, defense, food safety, drug safety, and environmental protection, all of which rely on chemical analyses that are typically performed on large, expensive instruments in highly centralized locations. What inspires you to innovate? My colleagues at HP. The people across HP are incredibly talented, and I enjoy recognizing opportunities for synergy across organizations, programs, projects and people. At HP Labs, we have assembled an exceptionally strong multidisciplinary team to build an emerging Life Sciences program. This team is comprised of specialists with exper- tise in fields as varied as biophysics, molecular and cellular biology, optics, spectroscopy, enzymology, nanofabrica- tion, data processing, and machine learning. To enable truly disruptive innovation, I believe we need to look at every corner of our organization to find our dif- ferentiating value, then harness the expertise, knowledge and unique capabilities each team has to offer. As an example, with this program, I sought to build a strong partnership with Advanced Technology and 66 Platform Solutions (ATPS) in Corvallis, a profoundly innovative organization. ATPS has created the last four generations of print head technologies and brings decades worth of knowledge, creativity, and capability in the field of microfluidics, a core technology building block in the Life Sciences market. What is your vision for the future? We live in a truly exciting time as we witness rapid prog- ress in multidisciplinary fields such as microfluidics, machine learning, spectroscopy biology, and biochemistry. After decades of groundbreaking research in academia, these fields have matured to the point that industry is now in position to enable the next phase of innovation by creating products and services that automate and decen- tralize the biochemical and analytical processes associated with diagnostics, testing, and screening. I believe these advancements will ultimately lead to a radical transforma- tion of the Life Sciences and Healthcare markets. What does Keep Reinventing mean to you? Many industries have experienced significant growth through innovation, but are now stagnant. Reinventing means changing perspective, challenging the status quo, and allowing the evolution of corporate identity. Reinvent- ing is what enables a company to leverage its foundational assets to bring forth a major transformation, and a new opportunity for growth.