OU Faculty Rakhi Rajan, Len Thomas and Steven Foster hosted 11 AP Chemistry students and teacher Novah Klein from Chickasha High School. Dr. Rajan organized the all-day event to promote a future in STEM and encourage students to join our department in their future academic endeavors.
In the morning, Dr. Foster and Graduate Student and MSPM Intern Amal Eltobshi gave a liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LCMS) lecture. They all then moved to the OU MSPM Core Facility, where students did some benchwork using solid phase extraction to isolate caffeine from their beverages of choice. These samples were then run on LCMS, and the data were sent to the students for quantitative analysis. Before they departed, the students and Ms. Klein were given a tour of the Core and a brief discussion of the facility’s instrumentation.
In the afternoon, Dr. Len Thomas and Graduate Student, Chhandosee Ganguly discussed X-ray crystallography, emphasizing protein structure determination. The students were given a tour of the Macromolecular Crystallography Lab (MCL). They were then back to the bench, this time in MCL, where they set up crystallization trays to grow their own Hen Egg White Lysozyme (HEWL) crystals. The students were then shown how X-ray diffraction data is collected and processed and how the molecular structure is determined and modeled.
Dr. Rajan summarized the day’s events and encouragement for these young minds. For all of us, it was a substantial day that reminded us of the broader impacts we can have on each other.
