My first day at Vector Textiles began with a tour of an entomology lab at NC State. This is important, because our end goal is to work on developing bug resistant clothing. The entomology lab is led by Grayson, a Ph.D. student at NC State who’s main focus is working with insects, specifically mosquitos in this situation. While we were taking the tour around his lab, he showed us the various pieces of equipment that they use, in addition to some of the specimen that they had there. Inside of a specially designed closet, which keeps the environment moist and warm, Greyson showed us the specially designed boxes where they keep the various stages of mosquitos. The box where the adult mosquitos are kept had a cloth opening on the side, where an experimenter could stick their arm in to test the mosquitos.
While it may not seem useful to stick your arm into a box of mosquitos, it is used quite often in this lab. The experimenters here have a special bracket that they can attach to their arm and secure a piece of cloth into, to test the cloths resistance to mosquito bites. This ties in well with the goal of our work experience program, which is to develop bite resistant clothing.
After our tour in the morning, we had lunch with Dr. McElreath and Mr. Self, and then headed back to the office space. We worked on chemical and marketing research until it was time to go home.