Posted by on Oct 29, 2017 in Posts, Student News

Senior Krista Meserve is all smiles in this selfie with the ICP-AES! This instrument utilizes atomic emission spectroscopy to measure the intensity of emission at a wavelength specific to the element of interest. Using a calibration curve, the intensity can be correlated to a concentration of the element, which is more useful to our work. Krista is using this instrument to calculate the difference in concentration of calcium in the presence and absence of DNA, hoping to understand how many individual calcium ions bind to a DNA strand. She is also smiling because she was awarded a travel grant from the New England Section of the American Chemical Society (NESACS) to travel to the ACS national meeting in New Orleans, LA this spring!