MURFREESBORO — MTSU
Project SEED students Helene Hamo and Edgar Lozano made successful progress in
research efforts this summer.
The respective Stewarts Creek High School and Central Magnet
School seniors worked in the program under the guidance of MTSU Department of
Chemistry chair Greg Van Patten and graduate and undergraduate students.
To view video about the students’ work in a Science Building
laboratory, visit https://youtu.be/H2f-dRFXT0g.
Project SEED (Summer Education Experience for the
Economically Disadvantaged) is a summer research program opening new doors,
giving rising high school juniors and seniors an opportunity to work with
scientist-mentors on research projects in industrial, academic and federal
laboratories.
The American Chemical Society and National Science
Foundation sponsor the program.
“They’ve made really great progress,” said Van Patten. “They’ve
been taking semiconductor quantum dots that are known and have certain kinds of
interesting properties and trying to change those properties by introducing new
materials into them through a new kind of chemical reaction, (called) a
cation.”
Cations are atoms that have lost electrons.
Van Patten said it had been known for some time cadmium
could be exchanged with silver in tiny quantities and expensive reagents “and
these guys (Hamo and Lozano) found a way to scale that up to large quantities
with cheap reagents.”
The pair, who each received a $2,500 fellowship, finished
their two-month research endeavor Aug. 4. In addition to Van Patten, mentors
assisting them included chemistry graduate students Alex Morris and Ryan
Tilluck and senior biochemistry major Ron Higdon.
Lozano, 16, called it a fun experience where they enjoyed
doing new things.
“We’ve learned a lot about safety in the lab,” Lozano said.
“Then we also learned how to keep up with lab notebooks to keep our research,
to keep a current record of everything we do.”
For Hamo, 17, it “has been a really unique experience and
I’ve learned a lot,” she said.
“I’ve had really great people teaching me in the beginning
and then we were kind of led off on our own,” Hamo added. “This is definitely
like a much bigger scale than it is in high school. And I’ve learned lots of
new terms and lots of new things.”
To learn about Project SEED opportunities for 2017, call Van
Patten at 615-898-2956 or email Greg.VanPatten@mtsu.edu.
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