Year in Review

After completing my third year here at The Ohio State University, I feel more ready than ever for my future. Despite the troubles that came from being a part of online school, I was able to adapt to the new style quite well. Going to class in my bedroom was a new experience at first, but I found the additional time I received from not walking to and from class made me even more focused and studious. This year also marked the beginning of my research career at the university. I will be doing research over the next summer and autumn terms in the Puskas lab, where I will gain valuable experience and help me learn more about advanced chemical engineering topics. I have already written a grant proposal for the lab which received $5000 from the OSU Sustainability Institute, which will help the lab acquire supplies necessary for an increased volume of testing. Overall, I believe I was able to find all the good that came with such a tumultuous year, and am looking forward to my final year this coming autumn.

Career

I have begun working with Dr. Judit Puskas and her lab to research alternatives to natural rubber. There is currently only one source of natural rubber on the planet, coming from rubber trees found in Southeast Asia. The farming of this natural resource has led to deforestation and a very precarious supply, as most of the trees are clones of each other to maximize yields. My research will be looking into two alternative sources of natural rubber: the rubber dandelion and guayule shrub. These two crops have shown great promise in creating a new, high-yield solution to the natural rubber problem, with the rubber dandelion even able to grow on Ohio farms. I will be involved mostly in analyzing the physical properties of rubber samples using asymmetric forced field flow fractionation to see if the samples are similar to existing natural rubber samples. With further research, the lab hopes to create pure samples that could replace or bolster the current supply of natural rubber.