September 1, 2006

Hats off to the 2006 NSLS Summer Students

This year’s batch of summer students is back to school after a productive season at the NSLS. Eighteen high school and college students performed summer research projects at the NSLS this year, working with scientists and engineers from the department in research fields ranging from medical sciences to electrical and mechanical engineering. In addition to their research projects, students had the opportunity to attend scientific lectures, tour BNL research facilities, and participate in numerous social activities.

Interested students apply to these programs in the spring and the programs range from six to 10 weeks long. More information and application procedures can be found on the BNL Science Education Web site at http://www.bnl.gov/scied/.

The NSLS staff and users thank all of this year’s students for a job well. Here’s an idea of what they did this summer:

Kimone Antoine

Kimone Antoine recently received her Associate’s degree in mathematics and natural science from Lehigh Carbon Community College in Pennsylvania and will attend Hiram College this fall. Under the mentorship of Lisa Miller, Antoine analyzed differences in the chemical composition between children’s and adults’ fingerprints using infrared microspectroscopy. Her objective was to reveal why children’s fingerprints disappear faster than those of adults.

Kobbina Awuah

Kobbina Awuah will be a junior at Cornell University this fall. Awuah worked with John Skaritka this summer as part of the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program at BNL. They designed a 2-in-1 cryogenic permanent magnetic undulator (CPMU) and a superconducting undulator (SCU). The design will help reduce project costs associated with switching from one kind of undulator to the other (i.e. CPMU to SCU and vice versa).

Jonathan Cheung

Jonathan Cheung will be a senior at Syosset High School this fall. He spent his summer working at the NSLS with Syed Khalid and Vivian Stojanoff on a project related to the origin of color from natural pigments. Cheung collected different materials that were dyed using pigments from vegetables, tree bark, and flowers. This dying process involves some natural mordants (fixers) such as iron, copper, and aluminum. Using spectroscopy, he found the color of the finished sample to be dependent on the type of material and mordant used.

Sarah Heins

Sarah Heins will be a freshman at Syracuse University this fall. Most of her time was spent observing administrative staff and scientists while they worked on everything from completing travel authorization forms to determining the structure and magnetism of certain elements. Heins worked with Stony Brook University graduate student Kathryn Krycka to learn how much time and effort is needed in order to conduct experiments, write a thesis and earn a high-level degree in the physics field. She also spent a small portion of her time researching physical concepts and past experiments done at the NSLS. In her spare time, Heins helped the secretarial staff to learn about the administrative aspects of scientific research.

John Kuczewski

John Kuczewski will be a sophomore at Shoreham-Wading River High School this fall. As part of the High School Summer Research Program, Kuczewski worked with Peter Siddons at the NSLS. He developed a graphical user interface for the Thorlabs OPTODC Servo Motor System under the GNU/Linux platform. Modeled from Siddon’s driver and kernel patch, Kuczewski’s software package for this motor system was programmed using the C programming language and the GTK+2.0 libraries for the Debian GNU/Linux operating system. GNU/Linux based systems are used at the light source for beamline controls and this new software package will integrate seamlessly into the present control systems.

Elhag Shaban, Marcus Mason and Eric Huey

Marcus Mason and Eric Huey are both juniors at Southern University at Baton Rouge. They worked with Peter Siddons and Elhag Shaban at the NSLS this summer as part of the Faculty and Student Team (FaST) program. Mason and Huey studied the processes involved in the development of a Bulk MicroMegas Detector. They characterized the detector using extended x-ray absorption fine structure (EXAFS) methodology at beamline X12A They also attempted to reproduce stable gains and excellent resolutions as studied in previous detectors.

Shirin Mortazavi

Shirin Mortazavi is entering her junior year at Bellport High School. This summer, Mortazavi participated in BNL’s High School Research Program. Under the guidance of Lisa Miller, Mortazavi studied the chemical composition of children’s and adults’ fingerprints using infrared microspectroscopy at beamline U10B. The difference between the chemical makeups should explain why the fingerprints of children disappear before those of adults.

Saka Okyere-Asiedu, Christopher Dixon and Robert Opila

Saka Okyere-Asiedu and Christopher Dixon are undergraduate students at the University of Delaware. They worked under the mentorship of Delaware Materials Science Professor Robert Opila and NSLS staff scientist Steve Hulbert at the NSLS this summer as part of the Faculty and Student Team (FaST) program. They used ultraviolet photoelectron spectroscopy at beamline U4A to determine how the chemical bonding of materials affects the electrical performance of materials. They investigated how the valence bands of silicon determine the conductivity of photovoltaics. The team also used the system to test for electrical properties of material with a high dielectric constant for application in Si circuits. Their results will help maximize the efficiency of solar cells and help determine which metal and dielectric are used in the future generation of very highly integrated circuits. To read more about their research, visit http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2007/sep/research092206.html.

Dylan Roden

Dylan Roden is an undergraduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pursuing a bachelor’s degree in biological engineering with hopes to continue his education in medical school. He participated in the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program this summer at the NSLS under Lisa Miller. Dylan worked with photodynamic therapy treatment of human melanoma cells in an effort to discover an effective treatment for the disease. He also uses Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) analysis to assess chemical changes within the melanoma cells as a function of treatment method.

Yusuf Siddiqui

Yusuf Siddiqui is an incoming junior at Boston University Academy. He worked with Syed Khalid and Vivian Stojanoff as part of the Community Summer Science Program at the NSLS. Siddiqui searched for the chemical composition of the active site of ferritin – a protein used in anemia prevention and early haemochromatosis detection. Ferritin contains a hollow shell that can contain a significant amount of iron and is therefore of great use to doctors treating iron deficiency disorders. Small amounts of cadmium, a toxic transition metal found to be in ferritin, could shed light on the plausibility of ferritin usage as a medical treatment, therefore contributing to further research into new treatments for iron deficiency disorders. For these experiments Siddiqui used extended x-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy (EXAFS). Siddiqui said he hopes that the work done during his internship will contribute to expand general scientific knowledge.

Rodney Snow

Rodney Snow is heading into his second year as graduate student at Michigan Technological University. He worked with Peter Siddons at the NSLS this summer as a GEM National Consortium intern. Snow was engaged with many assignments simultaneously, but his main project was assembling, testing, and characterizing a spin polarization detection chamber. This chamber will be used to detect the ballistic transport of low-energy electrons through ultra-thin films with a thickness on the order of 20 to 100 nm. This study can ultimately realize a new generation of electronics called spin-based electronics.

Weisha Zhu

Weisha Zhu is an undergraduate student at Cornell University. At the NSLS this summer, she worked with Babu Manjasetty of the Case Center for Synchrotron Biosciences as a Science Undergraduate Laboratory Intern. Their project studied the complex structures of Escherichia coli L-Arabinose isomerse, an enzyme with potential use for tagatose (low-calorie natural sugar) production. By co-crystallizing the enzyme in complex with co-factor metal ions and candidate substrates/inhibitors, they were able to understand structure-function interactions important for the enzyme’s biological mechanism. Crystals of different complexes were grown and several diffraction datasets were collected at NSLS-X4C and X6A beamlines. Comparison studies between the native and complex forms of crystal structures will provide valuable biological information in designing new pathways to increase tagatose production.

ARTICLE BY: Kendra Snyder