AlphaSniffer changes technology course, raises money

BOULDER – Although his training from Moscow State University is in glaciology, Misha Plam hasn’t spent much of career working with snow and ice. His genius is taking other people’s technology and turning it into commercial products.

Plam’s latest venture, three-year-old AlphaSniffer LLC, uses technology developed by Nobel Laureate Jan Hall to create a fast, inexpensive, easy-to-use method of detecting viruses, bacteria, proteins and other very small particles.

Hall, scientist emeritus of the National Institute of Standards and Technology and fellow of JILA, a joint research institution of NIST and the University of Colorado in Boulder, came to the rescue when AlphaSniffer’s…