The Sengupta lab undertook a variety of research over this time. Jake Perkins (’21 Chem) and Nolan Graham (’21 BMB) made up for their lost summer research experience in 2020 by working throughout the 2020-21 academic year. Jake worked with the innovation center to design equipment to study the “memory effect” of clathrate hydrates using the laser cutter housed in the facility. Nolan engaged in a virtual research experience where he worked on characterizing the dynamics of proteins involved in cataract formation in the eye lens. Both of them eventually wrote their senior theses on their projects. Jake’s thesis was titled “Development and Analysis of a More Time Efficient Method for Investigation of the memory Effect in tetrahydrofuran Clathrate Hydrates”, and Nolan’s thesis was titled “An Approach to Investigating γS-Crystallin Aggregation via NMR”.
After working in PrimBio in Exton, PA for a year, Nolan started in a Masters program in Immunology in University of California, San Diego in the fall of 2022.
Keylly Hernandez (’22 Chem) also joined the lab in Fall of 2020 and engaged in remote research where she started writing Mathematica code to analyze data for the gas hydrate project – work that she continued throughout her junior and senior year.
In the summer of 2021, the Sengupta lab got back into the full swing of research with Keylly, and two new members – Nathan Imgrund (’22 Chem) and Meem Noshin Nawal Khan (’24 Chem). Keylly and Nathan took on the task of building equipment to study the kinetics of gas hydrate formation from ice particles and the influence of alcohols on the kinetics of the process.
Meem took over from where Jake left off and worked in the innovation center to develop instrumentation to study the memory effect using the CNC machine housed in the facility. All three of them continued their research in the 2021-22 academic year. In Spring ’22, Keylly, Nathan, Meem, and Prof. Sengupta attended the Spring ACS Conference in San Diego and presented posters on their work. Nathan and Keylly presented a poster titled “Effect of Alcohols on Propane Clathrate Hydrate Formation Kinetics” with Prof. Sengupta as a co-author. This poster was selected by the conference committee to be presented at the SciMix poster session as well, which showcases the best posters from each division. Meem and Prof. Sengupta presented their poster titled “Investigation of the ‘Memory Effect’ of THF Hydrate Formation on Different Surfaces”. Keylly and Nathan eventually wrote their senior theses based on their work in the Sengupta lab. Keylly’s thesis was titled “Effects of Methanol on Propane Hydrate Formation and Mathematica Codes for Analysis of Reaction Kinetics”, and Nathan’s thesis was titled “Effects of Alcohols on Propane Hydrate Formation Kinetics”. After graduation, Nathan joined the Ph.D. program in Chemistry at Penn State in Fall ’22.
The summer of 2022 saw a couple of new faces in the Sengupta lab. While Meem continued in the lab with her memory effect project, Vy Tran (’25 Chem) took over the gas hydrate project from Keylly and Nathan. Julia Hunter (’25 BMB) joined the lab and started a new project where she expressed antifreeze proteins from an Antarctic bacteria. Meem is going to spend the Fall 2022 semester in Lancaster, UK for her semester abroad. Vy is continuing her research in the lab this semester.
