A few weeks ago I was notified of my acceptance to the BME REU program this summer at Case Western University in Cleveland, Ohio. For those of you who don't know, REU stands for Research Experience for Undergraduates. It is a form of a paid summer internship at a university funded by the National Science Foundation, designed to introduce students to the world of research by pairing them with a mentor professor. This will be my first lab experience to combine both engineering principles and knowledge in the biomedical field, so I am excited to see where I stand.
Today I just received my project topic for the summer. The exact title hasn't been chosen yet, but I know I will be working with Dr. R. on designing antibiotic drug delivery systems for wounds based on affinity. At this point I know very little about how affinity principles are used in drug delivery so I will have to do plenty of research before I head to Ohio. I do however have a paper to study from, from old research done in the same lab where I'll be working. I briefly skimmed through it and it seems like it deals with non-covalent molecular interactions such as hydrogen bonds, Van der Waals, hydrophobic interactions and ionic bonds between the solute and the delivery system.
I will be writing more about it when I have time to fully read the paper and do further research. For now, I am looking forward to this summer, it should be interesting on many different levels.
Happy bioengineering,
A.M.D
A.M.D
