Bringing you the latest news from the Gerdon Research Group
Do you know a fantastic Boston-area high school chemistry teacher? My research group has National Science Foundation (NSF) funding to support professional development for a high school teacher. That means – join our group this summer, get in the lab, learn some new chemistry, and get paid for...
Congratulations to all Distinction in the Field candidates on yesterday’s fantastic Distinction Day 2022, but a special congrats to GRAB Lab members Amanda Gilbert and Rylie Bolarinho. Amanda and Rylie worked diligently over their entire Emmanuel College career to earn Distinction in the Field. This included online work during pandemic shutdowns, a summer in the lab (with some A/C issues), hours in the lab in between classes during the semester, and more recent practice session after practice session to deliver polished and outstanding presentation. We are proud of your hard work! Rylie Bolarinho – Nanoparticle-aptamer conjugates as biomimetic mineralization templates Amanda Gilbert – DNA aptamers exhibit structure-dependent influence on collagen...
Congratulations to six research students on the amazing presentation of three posters at the National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in San Diego!! Amanda, Dianna, Grace, Julia, Luz, and Rylie (and Bailey!) worked hard in the lab over the past year to collect some really compelling results, worked even harder to get great-looking posters put together, and had very active posters in the session on Monday. It is an eye-opening experience to attend an ACS conference and it can be overwhelming to talk to so many chemists about your own work, but the researchers were amazing. They also learned a lot by attending talks, networking sessions, and the expo. Of course, we all enjoyed the sun, palm trees, water, sunsets, coffee, and tacos in beautiful San Diego!...
For Amanda’s last semester of research, she has been running more mineralization experiments with collagen and DNA aptamers! She has spent a lot of time by the ICP-AES (inductively-coupled plasma atomic emission spectroscopy), which is becoming her new favorite instrument. Amanda has also been working with new GRAB Lab members to continue the collagen research. When Amanda isn’t in the lab, she is preparing for the ACS conference, where she will present with Julia about collagen mineralization! She is so...
The GRAB Open Lab event returned to campus this spring! The goal of the event is to open our lab doors to any student, faculty, or staff member of our community so that they feel welcome in science and the Wilkens Science Center. Safety is a first priority, so the entire research group was on hand to help participants out along the way. The participants this year were largely first year students hoping to learn more about what chemistry research is like on campus. After hearing about our NSF-funded research goals, they got into the lab to try some “unscripted” experiments within the bounds of our research. The students ran into some challenges and some unknowns that are so common to research, but were able to find a way to make adjustments to their method to see the influence of nanoparticles, DNA, acids, and bases on calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate mineralization. Thank you to everyone for participating! Funding provided by the National Science Foundation, Division of Materials Research...
Grace is excited to spend her last semester at Emmanuel with the GRAB lab team! She’s excited to continue working on her SPME and headspace extraction of volatile molecules project and hopefully pass on her knowledge to the next generation of chemists! Hailey, a new member of the GRAB Lab, was able to get into the lab with Grace and learn a little more about GC/MS and SPME. Obviously, Hailey was excited to ignite some of the volatile molecules of interest! Grace is looking forward to all there is to come in this last semester including the ACS conference in...