Bringing you the latest news from the Gerdon Research Group
Senior Jason Miech took a break from research and school work to run his first half-marathon! He finished the BAA half-marathon with a time of 1 hour 47 minutes 22 seconds. Although running experiments and doing homework is important, it is equally as important to set aside some time for...
All research students, including Bobby Tzepos, Jake Shlaferman, Emma Duffy, Jason Miech, and Krista Meserve, presented their summer research findings at Emmanuel College’s Summer Research Poster Presentation in September. This event is a great opportunity for undergraduate researchers at Emmanuel to present and share on-campus research conducted throughout the summer and school year. This poster session was great practice on presenting research needed for the upcoming ACS conference in the spring in New Orleans that Bobby, Jason, and Krista plan on attending. Bobby’s research is now focusing on the sandwich complex part of the “scheme,” where he is optimizing the cobalt nanoparticle-antibody coupling to yield the most efficient conjugation possible. Once that is complete, the goal is to finally detect a protein putting together the sandwich complex with stripping...
Emma is starting the school year off strong by heading back into lab to continue the investigation of affinity equilibrium constants. She’s moving forward with a select few strands of DNA to do a more in-depth study of their affinity to hydroxyapatite. For the affinity experiments, binding is measured at a range of DNA concentrations and the Langmuir Isotherm will be used to calculate the equilibrium constants for the selected...
After four beautiful years of hard work, successes and failures, and support from the National Science Foundation, Division of Materials Research, the group’s RUI grant came to a close. Through this award the group was extremely successful in developing, characterizing, and using a new analytical tool integrating mass analysis (QCM) and optical microscopy with microfluidic solution control. Check out the paper in Sensors and Actuators B and look forward to a new publication in the coming months. The SELEX team also came through with amazing results in selecting aptamers that influence mineralization and have a high affinity and selectivity for HAP. Check out the publication in Chemical Communications and look for more publications in the next year. A big thanks and congratulations to all the undergraduate and high school researchers involved in this work! Hillary, Tori, Geoff, Sarah, Sam, Greg, Keith, Darren, Juliann, Aimee, Josh, Jack, Katerina, David, Jason, Krista, Jake, Emma, and many more – Thank...
Research alumni, from the Class of 2011 to the Class of 2017, returned to the Fenway to meet the current undergraduate researchers, catch up with Dr. Gerdon, and catch up with each other. This is always a great opportunity, once a year, to make new introductions and to hear about the successes and challenges of science and life. It was so great to see everyone and for so many to come back to campus. You have all made for my great years of research! Dr....
As a busy summer of experiments and hard work finally comes to an end, the entire GRAB lab team gets out of the lab to spend a day on the wonderful Charles River in Boston. Kayaking is a fun way spend some quality time bonding outside of the lab! As Bobby Tzepos begins to conclude his summer research, he looks back and realizes how much progress he’s made on the malaria biomarker experiments. After working on the electrochemical portion of the test for a year and a half now, he found a very low limit of detection! Moving along in the project, Bobby has been working on magnetic bead-antibody coupling the past few weeks and now changes gears toward the coupling of antibodies to cobalt porphyrin nanoparticles! It has been an exciting summer with great data and he can’t wait to start putting the entire plan...