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Was your drink spiked? One Providence College student is creating a new straw that could warn you.

Some research shows that more than Get Rhode Map A weekday briefing from veteran Rhode Island reporters, focused on the things that matter most in the Ocean State. Enter Email Sign Up Neve Palmeri presents her idea for SmartSip at the Donald Ryan Incubator Elevator Pitch Competition at Providence College in November 2024. Providence College Advertisement Q: What is SmartSip, and how does it work? Palmeri: Smart Sip will be a reusable, plastic drug-detecting straw. You put it in your drink, and if there is date-rape drugs — which primarily consists of roofies, ketamine, and GHB — then the straw will change colors, letting you know that your drink is unsafe to drink. Explain the science. Basically, we're using silver nanoclusters bound to DNA to bind the drugs. Our research has shown that ketamine will react by binding to these colored silver-DNA nanoclusters and quench their color. Our straws will be fluorescent, and if your drink is spiked, the straw will turn clear. So for now, it's only going to react to ketamine? Just ketamine now. We plan to do a feasibility study, and then we will be able to scale that detection to other drugs. How did you come up with the idea? When my cousin was in Aruba, her drink was spiked. She was unconscious for many hours. And then when I started to talk about my idea and pitch it, I learned how common this really was. I'm in college myself, and I think it's a pervasive problem that we don't really have any solution to. Advertisement These drugs don't have a color, odor, or taste, which makes them really impossible to detect. Plus, they are only traceable within the bloodstream for the first few hours. This also happened to one of my roommates. He went to the hospital after his drink was laced, and they said they could not even test him because it was no longer traceable within your bloodstream . One of my roommate's mothers said this happened to her 35 years ago. She's interested in my idea because when she was telling her daughter what happened to her all those years ago, she couldn't even give a concrete solution to the problem. Related : Do you have a patent? I'm still in the patent provisional stage, so we're still testing that science . What challenges did you face while developing SmartSip, especially as someone without a chemistry background? I'm a management and marketing major. Without the chemistry knowledge, I didn't know if this was actually going to be feasible. So I've been working with chemistry faculty at Providence College mainly. I have one chemistry adviser who has really worked on the science side of the product. My next challenge is finding chemistry students who are interested enough in my straw to work on a summer research grant this summer. I am also working on identifying a manufacturer. What are your plans to bring SmartSip to market? My go-to market strategy would be selling to colleges first. There are 18 million students in college and 197 million people over the age of 21 in the US. There are existing health and safety budgets within those colleges, so I should be able to easily integrate this product into their offerings to students. Advertisement Selling to nightclubs, bars, and restaurants that surround these institutions could be the second step. But I've also discovered that some alcohol brands have safety initiatives and budgets as well. I could partner with them. Selling directly to the consumer could be a strategy too, targeting women aged 21 to 40 who have active social lives. Who is your competition? There's There's also two other competitors: One is a coaster and wristband. But both require you to take a sample of your drink and place it on that tech. It's not a seamless integration. It's taxing and not very realistic. Do you have investors? I've won $7,000 in awards altogether from pitch competitions. Now I'm applying for some research grants. Besides that funding, the next steps are finding investors. How much will they cost to make, and what will you charge? We've priced them at $7.50 each right now, and we've estimated that we can produce them for around $1.25 each. We intend to make them in the United States. Advertisement The Boston Globe's weekly Ocean State Innovators column features a Q&A with Rhode Island innovators who are starting new businesses and nonprofits, conducting groundbreaking research, and reshaping the state's economy. Send tips and suggestions to reporter Alexa Gagosz at . Alexa Gagosz can be reached at