So good afternoon, everyone.
My name is Kate.
I'm a chemistry major.
And I would like to tell you a little bit
about the taste [INAUDIBLE].
So I work in the chemistry department
at Mount Holyoke College under the mentorship
of Kyle Broaders.
I've been working with Professor Broaders since January.
That's why I had this opportunity
to work with him over the summer on my project.
That was based on synthesis of biodegradable polymers.
So some of you may ask, what is a polymer?
So we define it as a long chain of monomers.
You can imagine monomers as those beads.
And when you combine all of them, what you gonna get?
You're gonna get this necklace.
So this is a polymer.
And those polymers have amazing properties.
We actually use them all the time.
Some people actually brought polymers today.
Your plastic bottles, they are made out of polymers.
Exactly.
What is the main problem?
Well, most of them, they are non degradable.
That's why we decided to synthesize polymers that
will be actually biodegradable.
Why?
Sorry.
Why?
Because you can make plastics that are easy to recycle
and is environmentally friendly.
You have a lot of different applications.
For example, in engineering, you make [INAUDIBLE] out of those.
And you can hear more actually about applications in medicine.
For example, [INAUDIBLE].
So I'd like to tell you a little bit about my synthesis process.
And don't get scared of those structures over here.
This is just to help me a little bit.
So my goal was to synthesize this product, which
is our monomer, right?
And it looks similar to lactic acid.
And our starting material was this molecule.
So after about 50 different procedures we find out that we
cannot synthesize this simple monomer.
We were able to synthesize this middle product, which
is our intermediate.
But we were never able to get to our desired product.
I cannot say we didn't synthesize it at all.
Maybe there was a mixture of different side product
and our desired product, but I couldn't
tell this after [? purification ?]
or after running an analysis [INAUDIBLE]..
That's why we decided to try something
different, different protocols.
So we decided to follow this protocol.
And this structure is a little bit different than that one.
However, this monomer is still biodegradable.
So it's good.
And actually we synthesized that.
I confirmed [INAUDIBLE] different analysis techniques.
And I was even able to polymerize this material.
So [INAUDIBLE].
What is the problem?
Over here, I use very toxic conditions.
This is diphosgene.
And some of you may know soldiers used them
during the first World War, and it's called mustard gas.
So we got our desired product.
We got our polymer, which is perfect.
Still, we cannot [INAUDIBLE].
Needs to be there all the time.
And actually, over the summer, we had small accident.
Thanks god everyone's fine.
That's why, at the end of my internship,
we decided to try different protocol.
And we were able to get this structure, which
is, again, a little bit different than those two,
as you can see.
But still, it's biodegradable.
And that's the most important for us.
And better news is its synthesis is very easy
and actually it's pretty green, because we don't use
those toxic materials anymore.
And right now I'm in the process of polymerization,
and I believe I can reach to that point.
I just still need to confirm it by rendering
analysis techniques.
So what's a typical day, so many different structures.
But actually I will need to mention this fun part.
As you can see, this is the most beautiful apparatus
that organic chemists can imagine.
It's quite expensive.
But we had a lot of fun running those reactions.
Those reactions may take from 10 minutes to 10 days
depending on the procedure.
And after that, we ran our analysis.
Once we get our product, we run analysis.
And this is the example of the machine that they use.
We have it actually in our campus.
It's pretty expensive.
It's about half a million dollar.
But it tells us more about the structure of our product.
We can find the structure by looking at protons, which
are hydrogens, or carbons.
This is the example of the data received
from this machine, which is called NMR, Nuclear Magnetic
Resonance.
And you may look at this and if you don't have any chemistry
background and never took organic chemistry,
you're gonna say, this is pretty complicated, right?
But I have to tell you, as an organic chemist,
it is pretty complicated even for me.
[LAUGHTER]
Sometimes we spend a few hours trying
to analyze those little peaks.
Sometimes it takes longer than a few hours.
A few days, I would say.
Why is this so important?
As you can see, this looks like a mess to you.
And it is a mess.
And we have to analyze each single peak.
That's why it's so difficult. [INAUDIBLE]
your product it's all worth it.
So what is my goal?
This internship actually reinforced
my goals of getting into a graduate program
in organic chemistry.
It's been a stressful experience, especially when you
run 50 different reactions and it doesn't work at all.
It's stressful when you have to use very toxic materials
like diphosgene.
But I discovered a huge passion to that.
And if I can spend eight or 12 hours,
I don't mind, because I love it.
And at the end, I'd like to thank you, all of you,
for coming to this presentation.
It's pretty late, but thank you.
Also I'd like to thank my amazing group.
Those people have been amazing and they made my summer.
Because if you have to spend with them eight or 12 or even
14 hours per day, even the weekends,
you have to really like them.
And we had a lot of fun together.
And I'd like to thank my research advisor, who
couldn't be here today.
But he's been very helpful and he was always there for us.
He gave me a lot of support, especially when I
felt a little bit down after running those 50 reactions.
And he was every single day with us to answer questions.
So that was also amazing opportunity for me
to learn more about different chemistry
techniques, analytical and synthetic techniques.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]