Building what you need is a skill that not everybody has. But Adam Saccardi learned its value at a young age.

“Dad always built a lot of the stuff around my house when we were growing up. I've now finally got my own place, and I've decided to kind of take that and apply it to my own life," says Saccardi, DIY Builder.

With the growth of the wood processing industry comes issues surrounding illegal logging. According to the United States Agency for International Development, the illegal timber industry is worth around  $50–$150 billion annually. The sale of illegal or endangered wood can contribute to problems like forest clearing and climate change, and threaten wildlife.

Scientists Rabi Musah and Allix Coon are doing their part to fight it.

“Many purveyors of wood products, whether it's lumber, whether it's furnishings and things like that, where whether it's musical instruments, want to have an idea of what kind of wood they have because it's against the law to trade in endangered species," said professor Rabi Musah, associate vice provost for the Learning Commons at UAlbany.

They’re co-founders of Sangali, a startup company developing a new technology that can identify tree species by analyzing a sample of wood. Users take a small shaving from the wood they’re testing and it’s matched against a database, producing the chemical “fingerprint” of the wood species. This allows illegal wood to be quickly identified.

Musah describes illegal logging as a crime that happens in plain sight.

“Import, export of wood, for example, you can imagine hundreds or thousands of shipping containers that have logs in them, and if people falsify the paperwork, it becomes very, very difficult without experts to differentiate an endangered wood from a wood that's not endangered, and wood that can be readily trafficked," Musah said.

Right now, the tech will be used by large purchasers of wood and the samples analyzed in a lab. Eventually, Sangali wants to sell “portable wood testing kits” so the average person can test items on their own and make sure they’re getting the specific wood they requested.

“Different species of woods have different properties and they'll respond differently in different applications. By having the ability to verify that I'm getting what I was expecting is going to enable me to confidently undertake my project," Saccardi said.