Alumni Spotlight – Vikas Pandey

The Wake Forest Physics Department fosters a tight-knit academic community centered around close collaboration between students and professors. This stimulating and supportive environment is often the birthplace for innovation. One great example is found in the story of Dr. Vikas Pandey, co-founder of Valetude Primus Healthcare. Dr. Pandey spent a summer working in the research labs of Professors Guthold and Macosko, and later applied what he learned to the creation of his company.

We reached out to Dr. Pandey for a comment on his experiences at Wake Forest, and this is what he had to say:

I, Vikas Pandey, Ph.D., joined WFU for a summer internship in 2008 for 3 months to work with Prof. Martin and Prof. Jed in the Olin physical laboratory. The work environment and science culture at Olin Physical laboratory in WFU was inspirational and highly supportive for students. I thoroughly enjoyed working with the group at WFU and pursued my scientific career in biophysics and machine learning (ML).

I co-founded a healthcare technology company named Valetude Primus Healthcare (VPH) in the year 2015. The state-of-art innovative technologies are at the center of the company. We make novel state-of-art diagnostic devices for rapid and effective diagnostics of infectious diseases (Mycobacterium tuberculosis, typhoid, etc.), anti-microbial resistance (AMR), and sepsis diagnostics. These patented technologies use fundamental concepts of electromagnetism, optics, and photonics. Our optical devices are popular in the physics and chemistry laboratories for single particle tracking and nanoparticle size estimation. These products utilize miniaturized rectangular optical waveguide and evanescent waves for estimating hydrodynamic radius of the single particles in the Brownian motion. One of the other products uses a patented structured magnetic field, superparamagnetic nanoparticles, and fluorescence methods to efficiently capture the specific rare cells present in a very low numbers (<10 cfu/ml) in the blood.

Overall, a deep understanding of theoretical and applied physics is essential for the development of next-generation cutting-edge, and innovative technologies/ products. I believe Olin physical laboratory at WFU is one such place to fulfill scientific and experimental research curiosity.

Vikas Pandey, Ph.D.
Co-founder, director
Valetude Primus Healthcare