Bringing you the latest news from the Gerdon Research Group
Julia has performed her first experiment in the lab! She conducted a sucrose density experiment and learned how to use the QCM instrument that she will continue to use over the summer during research. Julia is excited to continue conducting experiments, learning new techniques, and get her project up and...
The National Meeting of the American Chemical Society will be launching next week! The conference is virtual this spring which means that we don’t get to visit San Antonio, TX (Dr. Gerdon was really hoping for some local food!) where the conference was planned to be held. But, we might get more visitors from across the globe in a virtual setting. If you’re coming to the conference, visit us too! Gabby Zabala will be presenting her work on collagen mineralization: “Collagen hydrogel formation and templated calcium phosphate mineralization measured by quartz crystal microbalance” Dr. Gerdon will be presenting “Connecting chemistry to social justice for the undergraduate chemistry major” in the Chemical Education division at 6:20 pm EDT on Tuesday, April 13th. Dr. Gerdon is co-hosting a networking session for the Division of Analytical Chemistry with Dr. Anna Cavinato on “Distance Teaching Tips & Tricks” in the Analytical division at 11 am EDT on Thursday, April 8th. Hope to see you there!...
This semester, Amanda has been running lots of affinity experiments with collagen hydrogels and DNA aptamers! This is a new experiment for Amanda, who has worked on mineralization experiments up until this point. For these experiments, the collagen hydrogels are much smaller than what she was previously working with! She has also learned how to use the plate reader, which is an instrument she’s never used before. There’s still more work to be done with these affinity experiments, so she’ll be very busy this...
Dr. Gerdon spent some quality time at the Electron Microscopy Facility at Harvard Medical School this week! The goal was to get images of the different nanoparticle syntheses that Rylie and Dianna have been working it. Time at the instrument reminded Dr. Gerdon of first learning TEM from the incomparable Dr. Joe Slocik at Vanderbilt University many years ago. Back in those days we developed film to get our images! The CCD camera is a lot nicer these...
Dr. Gerdon is excited to be designing and teaching a new course this coming Fall 2021 called the Chemistry of Brewing. There’s tons of chemistry in the process of brewing from water chemistry to polysaccharides to alpha acids to yeast biochemistry. This is going to be a fun class and is open to all students (no science prerequisite)! It’s not designed for the chemistry major (not a chemistry elective), but could be a fun general elective!...
This semester, Dianna is learning how to multitask! She has been working on producing quality tiopronin nanoparticle batches while also starting the place exchange reaction. Dianna also completed a colloid nanoparticle synthesis and is excited to visualize them using TEM! As always, Dianna is happy to be in lab, taking NMRs, and synthesizing lots of nanoparticles to use for place exchange. Here’s to a safe and successful semester back on...