Natural Science Division

TOOMa Undergraduate Research Fellows

The Challenge and the Mystery of Scientific Discovery

In Pepperdine Today - Friday, July 24, 2009

"Seeing a young scientist have an "a-ha!" moment is energizing," says David Green, professor of chemistry at Seaver College. "When an enthusiastic student can make a significant contribution to the field, their excitement grows."

Stephanie Davis

Green is overseeing two research projects with undergraduate students Stefanie Davis and Michelle Miguelino, who have engaged in summer research projects as part of the Tooma Fellowship. The Tooma Fellowship supports innovative research projects conducted by professors and their curious students, and this summer four Seaver faculty members are guiding their students through a variety of specialized projects.

Michelle Miguelino

 

One of Green's projects examines the development of a method to isolate metals from seawater and analyze them after the salt has been removed. The second explores how to measure the toxic metal element barium, using electrochemical techniques. Detectable contamination of high purity chemicals often makes the process tricky, and Green calls the analysis of barium by electrochemical methods "difficult under the best of conditions since it is a highly reactive metal."

Both projects have been in the works for a number of years, as they required extensive preliminary research with previous students. "It has required almost a year of focused research to determine the conditions necessary to isolate copper from seawater at high efficiency and, at the same time, high accuracy," Green explains. "Each little step along the way adds to the body of knowledge, and each student brings something new."

Three out of the four summer 2009 Tooma Fellowship faculty are chemistry professors, exploring very specific areas in which finding results can sometimes be akin to finding a field of fortune amid a forest of fact.

Courtney Roberts

"Chemists often joke about crystallizing being equated with sorcery and magic," laughs chemistry major Courtney Roberts. She and her faculty advisor Joseph Fritsch are no magic-makers but they are making magnesium-crystalization discoveries with their project. Roberts is researching how to prepare biodegradable plastic - containing poly lactic acid, as found in food and drink packaging - in a way that is not harmful to the environment. Currently, it's ironic that in order to produce an environmentally friendly plastic, the catalysts used in the process can be toxic.

"For this reason, our research focuses on using magnesium complexes, as it is an environmentally friendly metal," Roberts explains. "We have been able to grow crystals of these magnesium complexes."

As it turned out, the student-teacher pair didn't have to employ any supernatural skills to grow the crystals. Says Roberts, "On a practical level, chemists never know if the compounds they make will be able to be crystallized, but we were very fortunate to be able to use this technique because it gave us a short cut in analyzing the magnesium complex."

This is the second year that Fritsch has worked on the Tooma-funded project with Roberts; last year, Roberts presented the early stages of the research at the American Chemical Society Western Regional Meeting in Las Vegas, where she won an award for Outstanding Undergraduate Research Presenter. Meanwhile, this is the first summer research project for Fritsch's second student Alexandra Evans; she and Fritsch are exploring which compounds can be used in dry cleaning solvent so that it will not be toxic to the environment when disposed of.

Alexandra Evans

"The problem is that they contain carbon and chlorine, and there are very few natural processes to break those compounds down, so they reside in the environment for a long time," explains Fritsch. "The Clean Air Act of 1970 placed restrictions on disposal."

Evans is still in the earlier stages of the research, but Fritsch says his student has "done a fine job and is ready for the next phase. There are always more steps in scientific research. Sometimes it feels like there are 10,000 steps!"

Knowing how much more there is to do is a sentiment shared by computer science and mathematics major David Vega, and his faculty advisor Stanley Warford, the Frank R. Seaver Professor of Natural Science and a professor of computer science. The pair is using their Tooma Fellowship summer of research to develop a theoretical system of proving that a computer program is running properly, using mathematical logic.

Warford calls the project "hard to explain," as specialized and technical as it is. "This is a theoretical project, to advance knowledge of programming logic so that engineers can write programs that will not contain a bug," he says, in attempt to explain the research in layman terms. "An example would be that when a computer freezes - which we call ‘deadlock' - it's because a program has an error. So with the applied theorem, it can be proved if a program will produce a deadlock or not."

Vega, who will enter his senior year in the fall semester, was introduced to temporal logic in Warford's class, and is thrilled with the development of their project, which has so far yielded around 50 different theorems. Says Vega, "Most people don't find proofs of theorems to be ‘cool.' I'd have to say that learning about the ways that different temporal operators interact with each other has been pretty cool, though."

Reid Messersmith

Fourth Tooma Fellowship faculty advisor James White, professor of chemistry, echoes Warford's sentiments in describing the complex project he and student Reid Messersmith are currently working on together. "Reid is continuing a research project that has been going on for a number of years, and it will take many years to bring this particular project to completion," White says.

He explains the project, saying, "We are developing a new method for adding a six-membered ring onto a pre-existing six-membered ring." A six-membered ring is a complex chemical compound and the pair is working towards creating a reaction that will fuse two together and form a ten-membered ring.

On a long-term project such as this, White is witness to the transformation of each student as they develop the project in their own way. "Over time they take on additional responsibilities in terms of what they are allowed to do. What I enjoy most is seeing the development of their laboratory skills and understanding of why things work the way they work."

Messersmith and his fellow Tooma students will present their results at the Tooma banquet and seminar held in the spring semester. Until then, all involved are enjoying one of the greatest benefits of the Tooma Fellowship faculty-student pairings: the opportunity for students and professors to learn together outside of the curriculum. David Green draws inspiration from the enthusiasm of his wards and praises their tenacity, saying, "They are bright, talented individuals who are colleagues as well as students."

And what the students often find as they develop their own instincts under the leadership of an experienced mind, is that the thrill of discovery leads to a hunger for more.

"I've learned that I have so much more left to learn!" exclaims Courtney Roberts. "This is what draws me to the lab each day - the challenge and mystery of what comes next. Looking at where I am now compared with my first day in the lab, I've learned so much about chemistry that I can't wait to find out more."

David Vega echoes Roberts' enthusiasm, and exemplifies why undergraduate research is so vitally important to the Pepperdine experience. "Since this is research, it's all new and no one is there to ‘teach' it to me. But that's half the fun - it's a blast to come to Dr. Warford and say, ‘No one else knows this.... But now I do!'"