Hi everyone! Mohammad here, posting after visiting Jack (Bundit) Diloknawarit’s lab, the Odom Lab. First things first—always a good idea to enter the tech buildings with someone who knows the way!
It was exciting to put on the purple coat and safety goggles and learn about the various tools Jack uses for his research on nanoscale drug delivery platforms. I got to learn about the vortexer, which, as the name suggests, creates a vortex. It does so to rapidly mix the contents of a cylindrical tube. In our case, Jack used the vortexer to mix liquid gold and a “shape guiding liquid” to create the nano stars in the “Heart Constellation”.
After mixing, the cylindrical tube sits for a couple of minutes and voila, potentially life-saving scientific progress towards fighting breast cancer! While watching the liquid slowly turn color, I noticed many other machines, some of them loud, adding to the constant machine humming that fills the room. As the growing nano stars darkened the liquid in the tube, I thought about the countless hours that go into research and the incremental scientific growth that improves our lives! I have recorded the process in a time-lapse—watch!
