{"id":4355,"date":"2022-04-06T14:22:30","date_gmt":"2022-04-06T20:22:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/?p=4355"},"modified":"2022-04-08T12:17:18","modified_gmt":"2022-04-08T18:17:18","slug":"students-make-the-most-of-their-time-with-american-chemical-society","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.coloradocollege.edu\/atb\/2022\/04\/06\/students-make-the-most-of-their-time-with-american-chemical-society\/","title":{"rendered":"Students Make the Most of Their Time with American Chemical Society"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Students Make the Most of Their Time with American Chemical Society<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

by Rhonda Van Pelt<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nine Colorado College chemistry and biochemistry students presented their research at the Spring National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, which took place March 20-24 in San Diego.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterward, some of them spoke about their work and their experiences in California. All were first-timers at the ACS meeting, and all felt it went well and provided networking opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Victoria Rosa \u201924 has been researching the blood-brain barrier, a semi-permeable membrane that separates the brain from the circulatory system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cKnowledge of a compound\u2019s ability to permeate the BBB is an essential factor in drug development,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Drugs targeting diseases of the central nervous system, such as mental illness, must be able to cross the BBB, but drugs intended to treat diseases outside the central nervous system, such as an antibiotic prescribed for a urinary tract infection, must not cross the blood-brain barrier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rosa has been interested in science for as long as she can remember.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy interests within science have morphed with time as I have had the opportunity to explore different disciplines,\u201d she says. In elementary school, \u201cI recall having an insatiable interest with studies of the brain and a deep drive to understand the chemistry and biology that governs it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rana Mohamed Abdu \u201922 also has been interested in science since childhood.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI love that there is always more to learn and the challenge that it provides. I love asking questions and problem-solving and I found chemistry to be a creative and scientific puzzle that excites me,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abdu enjoyed meeting chemists and talking with them about their research. The experience has motivated her to continue what she\u2019s doing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
CC students at the 2022 American Chemical Society seminar in San Diego.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Her research explores making chemical compounds using molybdenum and fluorinated ligands, molecules attached to a metal atom by coordinate bonding. It was part of a project she worked on last summer at Boston University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe hope is that these compounds can catalyze reactions that thus far have been difficult to perform,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abdu will head to graduate school next fall to pursue her doctorate in inorganic chemistry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aleesa Chua \u201922 also plans to start on her doctorate program in the fall; she\u2019ll work in analytical chemistry, focusing on mass spectrometry research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She and her research group worked on a methodology that would enable using latent fingerprints in biomarker discovery and analysis. They want to use mass spectrometry and machine learning to distinguish between healthy and diseased fingerprint samples. Chua conducted the research at the University of Kansas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She was happy to present her project to a range of people, from high school students to professors, at the ACS meeting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI love science due to its applicability to everyday life. We can use science as a way to better understand how the world and the things within it work. I also love how there are no limitations with science. Each finding you make only fosters a new set of questions,\u201d Chua says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Markus Bergstrom \u201923 was drawn to science around fifth grade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cTo me, learning and doing science are like unlocking the secrets of the universe. Science can explain and predict a wide range of phenomena, and it can lead to technologies that improve people\u2019s lives,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He\u2019s involved in the Distributed Drug Discovery (D3) program, which works with organic chemistry students in colleges around the world to create molecules that could help the more than 1 billion people impacted by \u201cneglected\u201d diseases. Those affect low-income countries where pharmaceutical companies don\u2019t have the financial incentive to develop drugs needed to alleviate the diseases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The program also will help mitigate what happens when bacteria evolves to resist the antibiotics currently in use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His next research project, this summer at the University of California Irvine, will relate to either carbon dioxide capture or creating fuels to store solar energy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Justin Tee \u201922 also is part of the D3 program, and has focused on finding greener, safer alternatives to chemicals that can be toxic, caustic, and carcinogenic \u2014 and potential precursors to phencyclidine (PCP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe big picture dream of this project is that every institution would teach this lab such that we create a collective pharmaceutical company powered by intro-level organic chemistry students,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In San Diego, he was able to meet others doing similar projects and learn how to improve the research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tee \u201cfell hard\u201d for science in the first grade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat has made me stay in love with science is the realization that the many disciplines and fields form a covert \u2018language of the universe,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tee plans to transition from organic chemistry to focus on climate change, and hopes to work on developing more efficient solar cells, carbon-capture technology, and instrumentation to detect greenhouse gases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ayush Chitrakar \u201922 will go to the University of Michigan for graduate school and hopes to earn a doctorate in chemistry, he says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For about one year, he and Elaine (Yiren) Zhang \u201923 studied rosinweed, a potential alternative to sunflower or canola oils. It\u2019s prevalent in the Midwest and tends to resist drought and insects.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAs this plant continues to be crossbred, the natural insect resistance could make this crop well-suited to organic or low-input production systems,\u201d Chitrakar says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The pair worked with samples from the Kansas Land Institute, and Zhang ran all of the 99 genotypic samples.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWithout her, this research would not have been possible,\u201d Chitrakar says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the other students, his fascination with science started early.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI like the never-ending aspect of science. There is always something more you can do with your project, another idea to try. In that way, you can always learn something new.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Students Make the Most of Their Time with American Chemical Society by Rhonda Van Pelt Nine Colorado College chemistry and biochemistry students presented their research at the Spring National Meeting of the American Chemical Society, which took place March 20-24 in San Diego. Afterward, some of them spoke about their work and their experiences in … <\/p>\n

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