At the start of college, I would never have imagined that I would be involved in on campus research. In my freshman year of college, I was invited to be part of Q-STEP which was a science club on campus geared towards research. I was invited to join by the advisor of the club, Dr. Martin, via e-mail. Each week the club would have a guest speaker and they would talk about their research. Sometimes the club would even collaborate with the Career Center and bring in a guest speaker from the STEM field to talk about their careers and how they got there. Some of the Rutgers guest speakers included Dr. Shain, Dr. Fu and Dr. Salas. I really enjoyed Dr. Shain’s talk because he explained how he travels to Iceland to study a specific type of worm that lived in the ice. I also really liked Dr. Fu’s presentation. He works with nano particles which was something I never even really considered when thinking about scientific research. At the time, I was in Dr. Salas’ chemical principles class, so for his presentation it was interesting to hear him talk about his own research with biomaterials. Nearing the end of my junior year, I’ve had each of these professors for class, so it was nice to have an idea of who they were prior to being in their class.
Everyone’s research sounded interesting and I knew that I wanted to get involved just due to my own curiosity, but I later learned it was a requirement for my major. So I looked on the website for the chemistry department and looked into what lab I would be interested in joining. Over the fall of sophomore year, I met with different professors to see which research lab I could join based on the select science classes I had taken thus far. I found that my best fit would be to join Dr. Kumi’s lab. Dr. Kumi teaches Analytical Chemistry, Instrumental Analysis, and at the time he was teaching chemical principles. For his chemical principles class I was one of his Learning Assistants. Since I had gotten somewhat close with Dr. Kumi, in the fall semester, I decided in the spring of my sophomore year to work alongside him. Our experiment was growing and analyzing Calcium Oxalate crystals, which are the main component of kidney stones. That was a great experience but I wanted to get as much research experience as I could, so during that summer I moved to Dr. Salas’ lab.
In Dr. Salas’ lab I work with biomaterials alongside other undergrads and grad students. We make biofilms and analyze their stability. One day we will make band-aids that are made from biomaterials such as keratin, cellulose and silk. I personally have also worked on making a battery that could be powered by biomaterials. I got involved in this project because it involves both parts of my major. I can use my knowledge of both biology and chemistry to aid in my understanding of this project. For this project, I applied for and received a grant from NASA to work on this during the spring of my junior year — for more about this project, follow this link! If you have any questions about research or getting involved feel free to research out!
Written by Emily M., a Rutgers—Camden Undergraduate Student and Raptor Ambassador.