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Analytical and Biomaterials Undergraduate Chemistry Research

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Feb28

Donalissa Alphonse ’24 – Plotting and Scheming

Posted on Feb 28 by

Donalissa has been keeping herself busy by preparing for the upcoming ACS conference (National Meeting of the American Chemical Society!) in March. After hours of creating graphs and designing schemes, she can finally see her poster coming together. Although Donalissa has enjoyed working on her poster, she is eager to get back in the lab and begin running more experiments. In the upcoming weeks, she has plans for more mineralization experiments as well as TEM (transmission electron microscopy) analysis. She is excited for her final semester and has plans to make the most of her research experience as it approaches its...

Feb21

Hailey Young ’23 – Snow Day? Snow problem!

Posted on Feb 21 by

Snow Day? Snow problem! After a not-so-snowy snow day last Tuesday, Hailey’s back in the lab running experiments for the week! She’s finishing up her work with DNA origami by testing different concentrations and types of cations in her annealing buffer to see how they interact with both the origami and the mineralization process. She’s excited to be in her final semester at Emmanuel, but it’s not over just yet! She and the GRAB Lab are getting ready for the ACS conference in March, and then she’ll be putting together her distinction in the field presentation! She’s made so many amazing memories with the GRAB Lab over the past few years, and is ready to make even more this...

Feb09

Dr. Gerdon and Science Fair Season

Posted on Feb 9 by

Dr. Gerdon got to spend an awesome afternoon at Notre Dame Cristo Rey Academy with Dr. Gian Grant’s sophomore chemistry classes. It’s Science Fair time and these students had great projects on really interesting topics. All had clear testable questions and exceptional experimental design focusing on at least three parameters and each in triplicate. The students had awesome motivation, put together great looking posters, and learned some great chemistry through these projects with Dr. Grant, who we’re honored to call a GRAB Lab...

Feb04

Kristy Ta ’24 – 24k Magic

Posted on Feb 4 by

After the long December and January break, Kristy headed straight to the lab to get started on her next project. She started her Au NP mineralization project and is excited for the outcome, it was a shaky start but there are high hopes! She’s also excited for the upcoming ACS conference this year in New Orleans. New experiments, new data and same supporting GRAB Lab! A lot of mixed emotions for her final semester at Emmanuel but she’s ready to finish with a bang! The image shows two reactions that each contain a collagen hydrogel, which is the structural protein on which bones are built. The dark color is from the gold nanoparticles – they don’t look “gold” when you make them nano, but they are working with calcium and phosphate to make some...

Dec05

Juan Alejandro ’25 – Frequency, you’re HERTZing my heart!

Posted on Dec 5 by

The semester is coming to an end and research is not showing Juan any mercy. In an attempt to understand what’s going on with the initial kinetics of calcium phosphate mineralization, an eight-day static experiment was conducted. Although the IR suggested mineralization occurred, QCM says otherwise. With the help of Dr. Gerdon, Juan is coming up with a new game plan for next semester! Will GRAB Lab finally see a decrease in frequency? Or, is the stable frequency telling us a different...