Optical filters are made for filtering out parts of the color spectrum that we don’t need, or that are even harmful. Migraines, for instance, are often caused by light from a particular part of the spectrum. Hooman Banei has invented a way to manufacture high-quality optical filters at scale for a reasonable cost. As a child growing up in Iran, Hooman worked in his father's concrete manufacturing company, but he wanted to be an astronomer. “My father and I had a debate about what I should do my life,” and Hooman decided to go into science before returning to manufacturing.

TRANSCRIPT:

Intro: 0:01

Inventors and their inventions. Welcome to Radio Cade a podcast from the Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention in Gainesville, Florida. The museum is named after James Robert Cade , who invented Gatorade in 1965. My name is Richard Miles. We'll introduce you to inventors and the things that motivate them, we'll learn about their personal stories, how their inventions work, and how their ideas get from the laboratory to the marketplace.

Richard Miles: 0:38

Some people have no filters, but our guest today has lots of filters, optical filters. So we're very pleased to have this morning, the 2015 winner of the Cade Prize, Hooman Banei. Welcome to the show, Hooman.

Hooman Banei: 0:49

Thank you very much Richard.

Richard Miles: 0:50

So ever since winning the Cade Prize in 2015, you've been living a life of wealth and fame, right? Paparazzi on your doorstep. I think those are your Bentley out in the parking lot, right?

Hooman Banei: 1:01

Well, you may think so. That's, that's one of the myths about entrepreneurship. Well, it takes a couple of decades to get there.

Richard Miles: 1:08

Okay. So 20 years now, it'd be like bill Gates, right? We won't even be able to get ahold of you . Hooman, let's start out by explaining for a guest, what exactly your technology is, what you invented, what optical filters are basically for those who don't know what they are, why they're necessary and what are some of the applications of optical filters.

Hooman Banei: 1:27

Sure. Yeah. Thank you very much for the opportunity. So, we deal with all kinds of filters in our daily lives. You know, anything from coffee filter to water filter, to air filter. So optical filters are also similarly made for filtering out parts of the color spectrum of light that we don't necessarily need for particular applications. I can give you examples. Let's say people who suffer from migraine headache about 80% of them are sensitive to light. And it turns out that the sensitivity is only two very, very particular colors of light. So if you can only filter out those two particular colors without touching the rest of the spectrum, you can essentially have say, eyewear, that is almost a hundred percent transparent, but at the same time, it gets rid of the problematic ranges of the spectrum. So these are many, many applications or applications for n ext g eneration smartwatches, where t hey're trying to bring really high performance and very high end and sensitive diagnostic methods to portable smart watch type of applications to bring some of the currently lab based test platforms into our portable devices. So these are also heavily based on filtering spectral signatures of let's say a glucose in our blood. There are many other things that they try to detect, and it takes a certain type of optical filter to focus on that a spectral signature.

Richard