Tori Sonkin has a problem.
“I have a lot of allergies…Eggs, milk, wheat, soy – soy’s a big one – shrimp, peanuts… It’s a lot.”
Like millions of other people across the globe, UTD sophomore Sonkin’s severe food allergies affect her daily life and make it difficult to eat anywhere but home without serious risk to her health. She never goes anywhere without her EpiPen, a device intended to treat a potentially fatal allergic reaction called anaphylaxis, and which Sonkin explains costs “$600 to $700 for one injection.”
So she started wondering why, in 2022, the only way to know for sure if a food contains allergens is to eat it and wait for a reaction.
“I wanted a device that tested food before I ate it,” she explained. “An EpiPen, you use that after you eat, and after you have the allergic reaction… Why isn’t there a device that tests your food before, so you don’t have to use an EpiPen, or get hospitalized, or any of that?… The EpiPen should be your last resort.”
In 2004, the FDA passed the FALCPA [Food Allergen Labeling and Consumer Protection] Act, requiring food products to be labeled with common allergens such as milk, wheat, soy, peanuts, and tree nuts. However, as Sonkin explained, “when you’re at a restaurant they’re not forced to warn the consumers. And people die in restaurants. It’s a lot more common than people think.”
In fact, witnessing such an event had a major impact on Sonkin. “I actually witnessed a guy die in a restaurant once. It was very terrifying… It’s not fair. You want to enjoy your time with your family over food, but instead it turns out to be this terrible experience.”
Sonkin came up with an idea to solve the problem food allergy sufferers face when dining out: it’s a small, portable laboratory-quality test that can detect food allergens in a small sample and return an instant result.
When researching, Sonkin found there are a few such tests that exist, but they only focus on one allergen. “What about the people that have multiple allergies?” Sonkin asks. “Am I supposed to spend $1,000 on every single testing kit?”
“There are so many different paths people can take, and it’s all really interesting.”
Tori Sonkin, Interdisciplinary Studies Student
Sonkin, an Interdisciplinary Studies student, decided to pitch her idea at the GalXc women’s accelerator, an 8-week program held every fall at the UT Dallas Naveen Jindal School of Management. GalXc ultimately helps participants “develop skills and competencies to become effective business leaders and founders of high-achieving startups,” according to the website. Throughout the year, JSOM hosts other accelerators – cohort-based programs of fixed length providing training and mentorship for students, faculty, and staff working to develop new companies or products.
Sonkin worked on developing her food-allergen-testing idea at GalXc – in particular, a pitch deck to sell the idea. A pitch deck is a short series of slides that briefly explain an idea and its potential to be sold as a product. Sonkin’s pitch won first place at GalXc and inspired her to keep working on the product “until someone tells me it’s just not possible,” she explained.
“I think people are too scared to explore it because there are so many different things in food that makes that allergen.” Despite the complicated nature of the problem, after considerable research Sonkin does think a portable test that detects all the major food allergens is possible.
She credits the School of I.S. with broadening her horizons, saying interdisciplinary study “really opens up your mind… I just took a lot of random classes – chemistry, psychology – but it was kind of nice… There are so many different paths people can take, and it’s all really interesting.”
Sonkin’s future career goals include studying global business and putting to use her passion for languages. However, she’s open to other possibilities. “I’m kind of just going with the flow… If I have a set plan, it always goes wrong.”