Dec09
Posted on Dec 9 by
Congrats to Juan, Marissa, Georgia, and Dennis on an awesome semester of research. We had amazing achievements and we have even bigger goals for the Spring, including a successful ACS conference, DITF, graduation, and more. We’re excited that Noah and Mia also got into the lab for some awesome experiments and that lots of new students are thinking about and exploring opportunities in research. We had a lot of new results this semester and we’re going to keep building on that. Now, it’s time to rock some final exams! Also, Hippos are great for the...
Nov20
Posted on Nov 20 by
It was amazing to welcome 60 high school chemistry students, along with GRAB Lab alum Dr. Gian Grant, to the Emmanuel College campus today. The students were here to work on their own research projects by making use of the EC Library resources. Diane Zydlewski in the Library walked them through journal article resources and citation styles. The campus tour with Admissions was fantastic on a beautiful fall day and lunch in the cafeteria was delicious as always. We ended the day with a lab tour and a chat with Chemistry faculty and students about lab work, research projects, presentation styles, and the wide-open topic of “what’s College like”? Huge thanks to all of those who helped make this awesome visit happen today, including GRAB Lab students Juan and...
Nov18
Posted on Nov 18 by
As the Fall semester is nearing its end, Marissa has once again been synthesizing more gold nanoparticles, trying new variations of place exchange reactions, purifying, and characterizing her samples. She has found that performing some place exchange reactions have potential to produce what she has been hoping for in her research. She is excited for the ACS Conference in the new year and continuing with her nanoparticles. As she continues her senior year and her academics, she is looking to the future for Distinction in the Field presentation and...
Nov04
Posted on Nov 4 by
The fall semester is so close to being over (only one month left) and yet so much research still needs to be done! Currently in lab, a dynamic solution procedure is being used to study how a dynamic environment would affect mineralization. Juan is using a syringe pump (aptly named LaLa by Jason Miech) to deliver around 1 mL of solution per hour to the instrument. There have been many bumps in the road with this project, but Juan has persevered. Like Dr. Gerdon says, “Nothing Daunts a Chemist!”. Other than research, Juan has been juggling coursework and classes, other work, and life. His senior year is almost halfway done, and distinction gradually...
Oct23
Posted on Oct 23 by
Dennis’ senior year has started, but there is still much to do in research! In the beginning, balancing schoolwork and lab work took some time to get used to. However, he has now set a weekly routine to focus on both! He is continuing his work on mineralizing with different-sized nanoparticles and has started attaching DNA to the larger ones. However, things are never as easy as they seem since it was found that the largest glutathione nanoparticle has stability issues. He is now trying to find new synthesis methods to improve the stability of larger nanoparticles for place exchanges with DNA. There are so many things to do before the ACS conference in the spring! Hopefully, he can achieve his goals by then. Happy Mole Day! 23 Oct =...
Oct16
Posted on Oct 16 by
Georgia just started sophomore year! She is is excited to begin research again after her August hiatus. Right now, she has pivoted back to trying to figure out the DNA origami melt experiments using the qPCR instrument. The goal here is to measure origami and array stability. She is trying a new technique where she purifies the 6HB and then makes the arrays. That would theoretically make sure there is no excess staples that would bind to linkers and make excess noise in the measurement. Results have varied right now but she does think its helping!! She is also going to try and improve imaging of DNA origami arrays in calcium buffer without mineralization to see if she can get images of pure arrays. She hopes it will go...
