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Craig Buckley is a senior who is majoring in chemical engineering. His research is in the field of nano-modified biomaterials, and he will be completing a Senior Honors Thesis.
What have been the benefits of participating in research?
Research is a great way to put into practice things that you have learned in your classes, but it’s also a way to learn about topics that you might not otherwise be exposed to. If you’re doing lab-based research, it’s also a better learning experience than a lab class since you will have more freedom and can often be designing your own experiments rather than just following directions out of a lab book. Presenting and explaining your research to others ensures that you have a good grasp of the material and helps to improve your communication skills.
What specifically do you research? What projects are you currently working on?
I am involved in researching how polymeric biomaterials can be modified and improved through the addition of nanoparticles. The project I’m currently working on uses gold nanoparticles to address one of the inherent limitations of many types of polymeric biomaterials, which is that they have excellent mechanical characteristics and are compatible with native tissue but do not readily support cell adhesion. This is a problem because the neighboring cells have to adhere to a polymer in order for it to be accepted by the body and avoid inflammation, which is especially important for something such as an artificial skin. By using gold nanoparticles as attachment points for cell adhesion peptides, these gold-peptide conjugates can be added to a polymer to give it a new functionality: cell adhesion. The gold nanoparticles essentially serve as “anchors” to hold the peptides within the threads of the polymer so that the peptides can add properties to the polymer without having to be integrated into the polymer’s chemical backbone. This general technique is not limited to just cell adhesion and can be used to add a variety of additional functionality to a polymer for numerous applications.
How do you actually conduct your research?
My work first involved synthesizing gold nanoparticles of the appropriate size to match the pore size of the polymer being examined. The particles were characterized through their absorbance spectrums and results from dynamic light scattering tests, as well as through direct examination with a scanning electron microscope. The particles were then studied directly in the polymer to make sure that they would remain in the polymer for a length of time and that they did not significantly impact its existing mechanical properties. These tests were done via the absorbance properties of the particles and by rheological testing of the polymer gels, respectively. The particles were then given a new functionality through the addition of a cell adhesion peptide. I’m currently determining the extent of attachment of these peptides so that I can quantify the results of the cell tests with these composite polymers. The cell tests involve culturing cells and examining how they grow on the polymer surface to determine whether or not they are adhering and treating the polymer like neighboring tissue.
What advice would you give to current undergraduates who want to get involved in research?
Start early and try to figure out what you are interested in and then look for professors doing research in that area. It can help if you already know a professor from class, but most professors are happy to talk about their research, so don’t be afraid to talk to one that you don’t know. Most of the time there will be a significant portion of background information that you need in order to carry out the research, so reading up on relevant journal articles is a good place to start. Talking to lots of people is also a good idea. Getting to know the professors in your department as well as the grad students will definitely help in finding research opportunities and in carrying out your actual research topic.
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