Bringing you the latest news from the Gerdon Research Group
As midterms have come to an end, Gwyn is in full swing in the lab! After a few weeks of trial and error, she has finally found a synthesis method for carbon dots that producing samples that emit different colors of light. Very soon she hopes to separate these carbon dots into their different colors. Gwyn is excited to continue working in the lab towards her distinction project and conduct some spooky spectroscopy right in time for...
Ann-Lee is starting her first Fall semester incorporating research into her school life. After having a productive summer, there’s only a few more experiments left to wrap up the current nanoparticle research segment. Whilst she thinks about more data that could be incorporated into a future publication, she has been exploring different types of mineralization experiments at 37 degrees C! She hopes to learn more about nanoparticle mineralization kinetics while turning up the heat, and maybe it can teach us something...
With her sophomore Fall semester in full swing, Lana is definitely experiencing all the highs and the lows that come with doing research during the school year. It is a challenge to find time for lab when classes are so busy. From her work this summer, she learned the importance of keeping her QCM (Quartz Crystal Microbalance) setup squeaky clean to obtain more reliable results. If she can get the QCM to cooperate with her, she hopes to see some promising results...
Georgia is starting her junior year at Emmanuel College and another semester of research. While juggling her classes and responsibilities during the semester she is finishing up her last experiments for the project to be published! She has won the battle against evaporation for her IR experiment with a new set up with more water. Mineralization reactions take place in the droplets on the plastic dish and the green caps full of water help to keep the air humid. She is really excited that her research is going to be published, and she is starting to think of what comes next for the DNA origami...
This past weekend of an Open House at Emmanuel for interested high school students to check out all that Emmanuel College has to offer. A few students, including Lana, helped out Dr. Ahmad and Dr. Gerdon in a chromatography activity for the families. The paper chromatography was pretty simple, but gave insight into the TLC, gel electrophoresis, or LC-MS that student get to work with in their lab in Chemistry. Plus, they make some great aura...
It seems like the State of the Project reports at the end of the summer, and the food safari through Boston and Brookline, was just yesterday. Now we’re already into October and the Fall semester is cruising along. So, welcome back to all chemists and researchers! Our semester is going really well with an expanded group – Gwyn has joined us to work on carbon nanodots, Noah to work on mouse enamel, Ellie to analyze social justice chemistry, and Donald to work on GC-MS – all in addition to the great work that Ann-Lee, Lana, and Georgia did this summer and are continuing this Fall. We have already been working hard to get abstracts submitted to the Spring ACS conference in Atlanta. Recently, Ann-Lee, Lana, and Georgia had the opportunity to present their work from the summer at our Emmanuel College Summer Research Poster Session. They did an outstanding job and were able to share their work with a wide range of majors, first-year students, faculty, family, and administrators. Congrats on your great work! (One small enthusiast seems to...