We’re very proud that Jessica Torres’ research project was featured in the annual compilation of SDSU Research Highlights.
Jessica was awarded a prestigious NASA Fellowship award which will support her research efforts throughout her pursuit of her doctoral degree. Jessica’s project focuses on developing new approaches to searching for chemical traces of past life on rocks on other bodies in our solar system. The challenging project will further enable NASA’s goals of exploring and understanding the conditions for how life can arise in the Universe, and if life has existed elsewhere.
Friday was SDSU’s annual Student Research Symposium (SRS) where grads and undergrads from across the campus present their latest research/works. It’s always a great opportunity to see the broad range of excellent research on display.
The Harrison lab was very well represented with posters from Cat, Arrion, Madee & Adrian, Jessica, Davis, and Muhand & Paola!
Most, but not all the group in one place for a change.
It was great to see all the interest in the work that the students are doing, and the new potential for collaborations that came from all the discussions with other researchers.
We’re very happy to announce that another lab member has joined the IMSD supported team of students in the lab. Adrian now joins Madee and Cat in the program. It’s a great honor to have so many deserving and promising young scientist in the lab, and it is encouraging that the IMSD teams sees, and wants to support, their potential as well.
Thanks to our friends at NASA/JPL we now have a new, powerful, instrument for the lab. Peter Willis’ group kindly donated an older CE-LIF instrument that they were no longer using to us. The instrument will greatly enhance our lab’s capability to do sensitive detection, opening up more avenues of research.
Last week (Oct. 13-17, 2019) part of the Harrison Lab took a trip up to Palm Springs to present some of their research at the annual SciX conference. SciX is a great conference for the group, both as it is just the right size to have a lot of great science presented and not be overly packed, and also because it serves at the annual meeting for the AES Electrophoresis Society (Chris is currently VP of the society).
Adrian presenting his cIEF poster to a fellow conferee.
Madee with her poster from her summer Brazil REU program.
So this meeting provided us with a great opportunity to present our latest research, and to catch up with colleagues from other universities and to learn from them. Jessica, Adrian, and Madee each presented posters on Sunday, during the opening mixer, and in Monday’s AES poster session. Arrion presented her poster on Wednesday, in the environmental analysis section. And Chris gave a talk on CE separations in one of the Tuesday AES oral sessions.
Arrion with her THS analysis poster.
Jessica presenting some of her non-JPL research.
All in all it was a great time, and capped off by the SciX Wednesday night Gala “A Night at the Oscars”, where everyone was dressed to kill, and Madee got the dancing started in style.
The lab members on the red carpet heading into the Gala.
Chris also coordinated a Sunday morning SciX bicycle ride, which is something far too few conferences have on their schedules.
Chris riding past one of the many wind turbine farms around Palm Springs.
Congratulations to Jessica on starting an internship at JPL/NASA this week!
Jessica’s new home for the next 10+ weeks.
Jessica Torres
Jessica will be working with Dr. Peter Willis to help optimize, and improve CE techniques for the detection of chemical signatures of life. The overarching goal of this work is develop, and hopefully deploy, microfluidic devices on probes to other planets or moons, in order to search for the chemical signatures of past or present life on those worlds.
We will certainly miss having Jessica in the lab for the next 10+ weeks, but it’s a great opportunity for her, and she will bring back some new techniques and knowledge to share with our lab.
Congratulations to Cat who joins Madee in the IMDS scholars program. The program is designed to aid underrepresented groups successfully enter Ph.D. programs in the sciences. We’re very excited to have two students in the lab who are so deserving of this opportunity, and we look forward to seeing their progress in the lab, and into their graduate careers.
We’re very happy to announce that SDSU’s Summer Undergraduate Research Program selected Cat’s summer research project as one of the few to be funded this year. The program provides a salary for Cat, as well as some funds for the research supplies that she will need to complete her project.
The goal of the work that Cat will be undertaking is to develop a ssDNA aptamer that will be capable of binding selectively to nicotine. It’s a big challenge, but she’s up to the task, and this should greatly help our THS analysis project.
The end of the spring semester is always an interesting time. On one hand, there is the palpable relief of having completed another academic year, and to have the renewed freedom to explore more in the lab. On the other hand, many of the lab members graduate in the spring, so it’s a time to bid them farewell.
Congratulations Ricko!
This semester we’re somewhat fortunate in that the only student to graduate is Ricko. Congratulations to you on all your hard work to get to this point!
Along with Ricko’s graduation a number of new students are joining the lab over the course of the summer (some right away, others after a short break). So check out the group members page to see who’s new, and who’s still working with us.
This past week was the 35th annual meeting of the Microscale Separations and Bioanalysis conference. This is one of the best meetings for the Harrison lab, as it hits on all the topics that we are interested in, and brings together the top experts in the field from around the world.
The view wasn’t quite as dramatic at the OSU campus, but the science was great.
At the conference Chris gave a talk about our development of a dynamic EOF reversal process. Jessica presented a poster about her new capillary coating and its impact on the separation of small molecules and proteins. Both presentations were really well received, and great feedback was given on how both projects can continue to move forward.
All in all, it was a great few days of seeing friends and their research, and getting inspired for new projects to undertake now that we are back. Plus we got new coffee mugs!
The commemorative coffee mug from the conference, a nice change from bags and USB drives.
