Gerdon Research Group Blog

Analytical and Biomaterials Undergraduate Chemistry Research

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Research Success Leads to new Hopes and Dreams!

Posted by on Dec 7, 2021 in Posts, Student News

The semester is quickly coming to a close and attention is shifting to final projects and final exams. This was a good opportunity for the group to reflect on the semester over delicious donuts from Union Square Donuts! Research students talked about learning new chemistry and getting to really get comfortable working with new instruments such as ICP-AES,...

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Dianna Shields ’22 – nanoparticle progress!

Posted by on Dec 2, 2021 in Posts, Student News

Dianna has been back in the lab after a hiatus this summer making progress on the nanoparticle project. She has improved upon her original nanoparticle synthesis protocol and started working on the PEG attachment protocol. As the semester comes to a close, Dianna hopes to obtain TEM and 1H NMR spectra of her TMPCs with PEG attached to the surface. Overall,...

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Luz Padilla ’22 – Technical Difficulties and Frustrations

Posted by on Dec 2, 2021 in Posts, Student News

Luz has continued to work towards understanding the influence of different textiles on the GC-MS analysis of combustible materials, with an eye on forensics applications. Luz has been working with several different textiles and diesel standards in acetone. Due to technical difficulties with an unhappy computer, she had a frustrating time in lab.  This was...

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Dr. Gerdon – Small AFM successes!

Posted by on Nov 9, 2021 in Posts, Student News

Dr. Gerdon has had a very slow time in the lab this semester (where do the hours go?), but he is proud to have made some “small” progress on using the AFM at the MIT Koch Institute to image DNA origami tiles seen here. These tiles are about 60 x 90 nm in size and about 2 nm tall! So cool! There’s more work to be done, particularly in purifying...

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Julia Japo ’23 – new and improved collagen

Posted by on Nov 2, 2021 in Posts, Student News

Julia has been excited to start research again in the Fall. She has been doing a lot of data analysis and continues to conduct collagen mineralization experiments using a Quartz Crystal Microbalance (QCM). She is looking forward to continue improving the methods of these experiments and learn more about the process of collagen mineralization.

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Amanda Gilbert ’22 – SEM imaging is next!

Posted by on Nov 2, 2021 in Posts

This semester, Amanda has been busy continuing her work with collagen hydrogel mineralization! She has done a few different experiments with collagen and DNA aptamers, including her most recent experiment, which was a 7-day mineralization reaction. These hydrogels will be used for SEM imaging, which means she will have more cool images to analyze! Amanda...

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