Inception & the Reality of Calibration Transfers

Matthew Eady: 13 April 2025

A quick note on the beginnings of this company and site.

The longer I stay in the spectroscopy field, the more I notice how it relates to everyday life. It’s early 2025 and I’ve just been let go from a job that I loved and one that I felt made a difference in the world, as did thousands of others from USAID and fellow implementing partners. Having a moment to take stock of the situation has reaffirmed my belief in the spectroscopy and image processing work we have been conducting for years, in detecting substandard or falsified medications with low-cost spectroscopy solutions, which can be transferred to others, along with image processing, and precision agriculture.

One glaring metaphor struck me when planning my next step. For those of us who have worked in the spectroscopy field, calibration transfers between spectrometers, locations, or targets can be a challenge, but necessary when expanding real and meaningful applications. Calibration models are a group of sample data that describes a certain target sample, and its natural variance. For example, NIR spectral scans of a group of Honeycrisp apples would look different than a group of Gala apple scans. Much like people, no two spectrometers are the same. There are slight differences that can come into play, introduced by either spectrometer nuances, sampling variance, or changes in the target / environment. Transferring a Gala apple model from one spectrometer to another requires some planning and preparation.

This is a moment to pause, and regroup, essentially transferring the experience and work to a new path in life, Orion RTP. The work moves on, the mission moves on, just as we might with adding a new spectrometer to an existing network model, through a calibration transfer.

If you find the site interesting, please join our mailing list for updates!

Introduction:

I have a background in Agriculture, earning a BS, MS, and PhD in Food Science and Technology from the University of Georgia, with a focus on food microbiology. While attending the University, I worked as a lab technician / research associate at the United States Department of Agriculture, where I conducted research in hyperspectral imaging. I’ve also instructed courses as an Adjunct Professor at Murray State University. I currently live in North Carolina, where I have spent the past 5.5 years overseeing spectroscopy projects aimed at screening essential medications for global donation-based supply chains. I enjoy being in the woods, coffee, baking, fishing, more coffee, and too many other hobbies to list.

Random fact of the day: I spent time in my early 20’s as a culinary instructor, and filmed a couple television pilots.

Photo: Goodnight Museum Park (Raleigh, NC) (cr: Matthew Eady)