Five students from Catawba College traveled to Anaheim, Calif., March 26-30 for the American Chemical Society National Conference. Four of those attending presented research, while all participated in workshops, many of which were career-oriented, and technical lectures. One Catawba student, Carly Sabat of Warren, Ohio, who was unable to attend the conference, won an award there for her research.
Those students attending included junior Jacob Hill of Salisbury, junior Lori Fraley of Cleveland, senior Nate Griffin of Boomer, senior Joe Manser of Mooresville, and sophomore Justin Smith of Greensboro.
This summer, Hill will attend the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates at the University of Southern Mississippi, and Smith will attend a summer internship program at Yale University wherein he will shadow physicians. Fraley has received offers to attend the National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates this summer, but is unsure of her plans at present. Griffin plans to attend UNC Chapel Hill this fall to work on a Ph.D. in Chemistry/Biochemistry. Manser plans to enroll in a Ph.D. program in Chemical Engineering this fall and has been accepted to N.C. State University and Notre Dame.
Jacob Hill, who with Carly Sabat, co-authored a paper entitled, "Analysis of sunscreen lip balm components by high performance liquid chromatography," presented the research at the ACS conference. This paper reported on the development and validation of a method for the analysis of oxybenzone and octinoxate in sunscreen lip balm products. Oxybenzone and octinoxate are used to absorb ultra violet radiation. It is an active ingredient found in many sunscreen cosmetics, including sunscreen lip balm. This method involves a simple extraction procedure and analysis using reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Modifications were made to simplify the sample preparation procedure. The advantages of this method and the analytical figures of merit will be reported. The method development described above was done through the Catawba Analytical Research Laboratory (CARL), an industrial-academic partnership at Catawba College. Interaction with area industry, in this case Filltech USA of Rockwell, N.C., provides undergraduate students an excellent opportunity to experience the practice of chemistry in today's society. Students develop problem-solving skills based upon scientific inquiry and context-based examples. Through these experiences, students will not only learn technical and scientific knowledge, but also learn how to apply that knowledge to the problem at hand and think independently, creatively, and critically. Dr. Mark Sabo, chair of the chemistry department at Catawba, and Elizabeth Nobel of Filltech USA also helped author this paper.
Jacob Hill also presented a paper he had authored in conjunction with Dr. Thomas C. Devore of James Madison University. It was entitled "Thermal decomposition of transition metal oxalate compounds."
Lori Fraley presented a paper she co-authored with Yasamin Moazami and Dr. Craig A. Ogle of UNC Charlotte. It was entitled "Biodegradable polymeric nanoparticles for the intracellular delivery of antimicrobial drugs."
Nathan Griffin presented a paper he co-authored with Biswajit Ghosh and Marek Urban of the School of Plymers and High Performance Materials at the University of Southern Mississippi, Hattiesburg, Mississippi. It was entitled "Synthesis and modification of chitosan from crabshell."
Joseph Manser presented a paper he co-authored with Jeff Alston and Jordan Poler of UNC Charlotte, Department of Chemistry. It was entitled "Photon Enhanced Aggregation (PEA) of Single Walled Carbon Nanotube (SWNT) Dispersions."
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