Ben O'Leary, 36, has also designed a tool to make the work of others easier. O'Leary started his career working in a DNA lab and has gone on to become a forensic scientist.
O'Leary experienced first hand how traditional DNA sample processing was ineffective. The inadequacies of traditional work flow systems struck him.
"Having the overview of working in a laboratory then at crime scenes I saw the double handling," he says.
In his spare time O'Leary came up with a design for a DNA swab, which he calls the DNAmic swab. The DNAmic swab is double-sided allowing both trace and body fluid collection at once. The design reduces the chances of contamination risk, sample loss, mislabelling, and it can be stored at room temperature, without losing stability.
Taking the design from conception to market is an expensive and time-consuming process, which O'Leary couldn't fund entirely himself.
"I was lucky enough to have some capital available to pay for an intellectual property lawyer to do a freedom to operate search to see if it was able to be patented."
The search came back showing the swab was unique and novel, meaning O'Leary could patent the design.
"Then I needed to start testing the device," says O'Leary. "The biggest thing is having the money to progress it without re-mortgaging your house."
At the time in 2014 O'Leary's wife Melanie worked for AMP, which has provided scholarships to more than 300 Kiwis over the past 20 years in a wide variety of fields.
He applied for a $5000 AMP People scholarship, available to family of staff members. The judges were so impressed with his application they upgraded his award to a $10,000 national scholarship, open to all Kiwis not just staff.
O'Leary used the money towards experiments he needed to carry out on the prototype swab. Each DNA test of the swab cost around $500, so it was never going to be a cheap process. But it worked and O'Leary is in talks with specialised manufacturers in the United States that have the facilities such as clean rooms to manufacture a viable product.
"Without the scholarship I wouldn't have been able to do the background work to get to this point."
O'Leary, whose start-up is called Crime Scene Solutions still works full time in his day job as a forensic scientist at the Institute of Environmental Science and Research.
Both awards are now open for entry.