14 Jun Brylea Butler – University of Houston – Week One

The first week of my internship at University of Houston with professor Maljanic has been so exciting! I got here on Sunday June 7th and how the time has flown. Throughout this week I have gotten to know my suite mates and the incredible grad students I get to work with. I also got to get to know my amazing lab mate and fellow Pintern Riley.

On Monday I got right into research and lab work. I am on a project to develop a macrocycle that will bind with anions more effectively than those before it to help mitigate pollution. While anions a necessary piece of biological and industrial processes, an excess in them can do more harm than good. The development of a macrocycle that can effectively bind with anions can help with environmental monitoring and water purification. I am currently focusing on the mapping of their proton structure after binding to an anion using NMR or nuclear magnetic resonance. This is done using the magnetic field that is within the nuclei of molecules and placing them into an external magnetic field to see if and were the protons have interacted and bonded. Continuing into the project I will assist with data collection and organization, preparing the NMR, and diving further into the research of macrocycles and anions interaction.

Along with the heavy lifting of the research, I have also got to participate in some fun and lighthearted experiments that the grad students prepared for me and Riley. We preformed Tollen’s Test to identify if there were aldehydes within a mixture, made elephant’s toothpaste, condensed gasses within a balloon using liquid nitrogen, and saw the effects liquid nitrogen can have on extremely hot water. We also learned the greatest lesson in science, not everything you try will work. We had several failed experiments for various reasons which we could not control.

Outside of the lab I got to see some of Houston outside of the campus. We went with the Welch program to the movie theater and walked to the POST market. We got to see art, small shops, and an incredible food court. Overall, this first week has been a success and I can’t wait to see what the next three weeks bring!