.We spent the morning doing some work on the reinvent the toilet project. Which although pretty smelly, was a really cool experience. It was a project that could make a real difference in the world, as it plans to create a toilet that is self-sufficient and doesn’t need additional water or energy, which could be monumental in solving health and sanitation problems, especially in India. Dr. Katie Sellgren, who is a main component of the project, has also designed an osmotic pump that uses forward osmosis as opposed to reverse osmosis to clean the water that will be used to flush the toilet. Kiera and I got to test several water samples using a variety of devices.
In the afternoon, we got to experience all the stages that go into making a medical implant. It was like a cooking show where they have pre-cooked items so that the host can continue doing the show without waiting for things to cook. Dr. Natalie had each stage of the implant pre-made, so instead of waiting in between steps, we could move forward. It was really interesting to see how these implants are actually made.
Today was the day I had been waiting for: chemical inventory day! I was so excited to spend hours sorting, organizing, and looking at endless chemical bottles. I expected this to be the perfectly monotonous repetitive task I dreamed of doing every day. I was wrong. After hours of hand cramps, back aches, and blurry eyes from reading chemical names that contained more letters than I ever thought could be in a single word, I decided chemical inventory was just not for me. It is a necessary part of having a successful chemical lab, but it was just painful. Kiera and I tried our best to reorganize the chemicals when we put them back in the cabinet, but it seemed that our organization would be in vain, as the various people using this lab would likely not even notice our new organization system.
During my 3rd day at RTI, I got to experience a lot of cool lab technologies. Firstly, Kiera and I worked to create WOW particles in the lab, which stands for “water in oil in water”, and are truly, wow. These particles have a core, which in this case was simply water and food dye, to see the particles better, and then they are encapsulated in a two-layer shell. This technology is used to create a shell around particles, and this particular project was used for delivering chemicals into oil wells that can withstand the harsh conditions of the well. A lot of this process we couldn’t really see, as it is done by UV curing, and UV rays are harmful to look at. However, at the end of this process we were left with what looked like thousands of microscopic beads at the bottom of a test tube. While initially this didn’t look very exciting, it was way cooler when viewed under a microscope. We could see that each of these beads were perfect circles, encapsulating 1 or a few little particles. We used a variety of food dye, just so we could see the slight differences.
The afternoon brought yet another amazing experience with microscopes. We visited the SEM microscope, which uses electrons as opposed to rays of light, and can see things smaller than 1 nanometer, or about 1/100,000 the width of a human hair! First, we had to coat various objects, which were foams created with tiny glass balls to decrease their density, in metal so that the microscope could pick up the textures. This was done by creating a plasma of argon gas in a vacuum around the objects, which glowed an amazing purple-pink. Then we got to see objects 20,000x zoomed in under the microscope. It was incredible to see the immense texture of objects that looked completely smooth to the naked eye.
Where the test tubes were storedPreparing for the spectrometer
My second day at RTI gave me more of a taste of what a real world job in chemistry is like, rather than just the introduction from the first day. In the morning, I sat in on a conference call with Dr. Rothrock. Some of her team was in Washington DC, and experts and leaders in HIV prevention from NIH, USAID, the Gates Foundation and more participated in the conference call. After some initial struggles with technology, we listened to Dr. Rothrock’s core team that is working on HiP, the HIV prevention implant for women in Africa describe their progress in the last year. There were several tasks, with a different team working on each. The first task was finding an effective drug to put inside the delivery device. There have been many HIV prevention medications already developed that are incredibly effective, but some have properties that make them difficult to use in an implant, such as their solubility in water. The second task was to perform animal studies using the implant, which is an ongoing process. We learned that although the studies started in rats, they have moved to using large rabbits, as they can test their blood more often for concentrations of the drugs. The final task that we learned about was the clinical studies. As there is a lot of stigma around taking pills or any HIV prevention medication in many villages in Africa, it is important for researchers to figure out what women will actually use, as the efficacy of the medication and device are irrelevant if they are not being used. One concern expressed by women in villages that surprised everyone on the team was the fear about “thugs” taking the devices from their arm, or wherever they are implanted. Many women shared stories they had heard about devices being ripped from women’s arms, and the thugs would try to smoke them, as they thought it contained traditional “drugs”. There were surveys conducted to the women about the length of time the device would last, biodegradable vs. removable, and flexibility to determine what would be the most popular in villages.
In the afternoon, Kiera and I observed some lab work that was directly related to the HiP project. It was really cool to see the intersection between the business side of science that we had seen in the morning, and the bench science that made the business possible. We watched a biochemist, Dr. Natalie Giourard, measure the concentrations of the drug in viles, which was done to mimic the simultaneous animal study, so that the scientists could predict what they would see in the blood tests of the rabbits. While it sounded simple to record concentrations of just 22 test tube samples, it was quite a tedious process. The devices, which are made out of either polymer film or an extruded polymer tube and filled with either sesame or canola oil, have a semi-permeable membrane that is supposed to release controlled, linear amounts of the drug over time and must be kept sterile. Working under a sterile hood and with disinfected gloves, Dr. Giourard pipetted a fresh salt solution made to mimic the body into 22 new test tubes, and transferred the device from their current test tubes to the fresh ones. She then used a spectrometer to measure the concentrations in each previous vile. Overall, the second day was less interesting than the first, but it was really neat to experience what an actual chemistry job is like on a daily basis.
My first day at RTI was an exciting one. This first day was mostly used as an introduction to the company, facility, staff, and projects of RTI. Dr. Ginger Rothrock, my main contact and mentor at RTI, prepared a presentation for me and Kiera, who is also working at RTI. This presentation described the magnitude of RTI as an international company, and explained some exciting projects that had come out of RTI, or are currently being worked on. Of these, the most interesting to me are the projects to create an HIV prevention implant for women in Africa (HiP) and RTI’s project to create a better toilet. HiP was really fascinating to me, as Dr. Rothrock explained the challenges and stigmas women in Africa face around taking HIV prevention medication. The project to create a better toilet is trying to create a self sufficient toilet that doesn’t need electricity or water, and it’s target is villages in India. I really enjoyed learning briefly about both of these projects, as they are both a perfect intersection between lab science and real world problems.
After eating lunch in the RTI cafeteria, Kiera and I went to one of the labs with Dr. Chasity Norton, Kiera’s main contact. Dr. Norton has worked on a variety of projects at RTI, but her main project involved creating a stronger cement to surround wells, to prevent oil and gas leaks. The work we did today was more of a demonstration for us, rather than contributing to a current project. Dr. Norton showed us how to measure out water, cement powder, and additives to make various cement mixtures. One mixture was purely cement and water, one had 0.5% Calcium Chloride, one had 1.0% Calcium Chloride, and one had 1.0% Maltodextrin. We then put our mixtures into a calorimeter, which will show us the heat of hydration, or the amount of energy produced when the cement sets, over the course of the next few days. The different additives will supposedly change the speed at which the cement sets. Overall, it was really interesting to use lab equipment in a real industry setting, even though we weren’t working on an actual project.
