REU 2021 Has Been Postponed Until 2022 – Learn More Here
Please Review the REUs and Select Your Choice Below for an REU to Apply For
Architected materials: teaching old materials new tricks
Primary PI: Osama Bilal
Do you like to play with magnets or LEGOs? Do you want to use a 3D printer to realize a cute looking artifact? How about cutting and engraving a piece with lasers? In our lab, we use some of the state of the art equipments to produce structures with properties that doesn’t exist in nature. As a part of our lab, you will get to design some parts on the computer, produce them and do some experiments on them to show how awesome they are!
Designing Supramolecular Protein Materials from the Bottom Up: A Computational Approach
Primary PI: Anna Taraknova
A myriad of degenerative diseases has been linked to the formation of fibrilar amyloid aggregates by protein and polypeptide self-assembly. Recently, it was discovered that small-molecule metabolites associated with metabolic disorders can form similar supramolecular amyloid-like structures. The molecular mechanisms by which these nanostructures form and the specific molecular determinants of the resulting structural and functional features of the aggregates that may contribute to pathologies are not fully characterized. In addition, despite the ubiquity of amino acids in biology, there are no comprehensive studies to date to characterize the nanostructure and mechanical properties of aggregates assembled from single amino acids and other small molecule metabolites. This research will open avenues for developing supramolecular structures based on single amino acids, to be used as mesoscale building blocks for engineering pristine hierarchical materials for a variety of biomedical engineering applications. In this project, the student will gain experience in molecular model development, atomistic modeling, coarse-graining approaches, molecular simulation setup and implementation on supercomputers, molecular visualization software, MATLAB/Python scripting, and scientific writing. The student will have a chance to participate in a collaborative project with an experimental group, and if successful, contribute to a scientific publication.
Computational Drug Design for Non-Addictive Alternatives to Pain Management
Primary PI: Anna Taraknova
Opioid-based analgesic approaches to chronic pain management, including in the musculoskeletal system, have been implicated as significant risk factors of addiction responsible for the opioid crisis. At present, effective, non-addictive treatment alternatives to opioids to manage chronic pain in the musculoskeletal system are lacking, despite a widespread need. Our long-term goal is to develop alternative, non-addictive analgesic approaches, integrating in silico predictions of commercially available compounds to target multiple pain pathways simultaneously. In this project, we will work with collaborators in the School of Pharmacy and UConn Health Center to test these compounds for efficacy and addiction propensity in mouse models, to ultimately improve treatment outcomes in chronic pain patients. The student will be involved in the development of an in silico framework to virtually screen a library of commercially available molecules as potential drug targets for two pain pathways simultaneously. In this project, the student will gain experience in molecular model development, atomistic modeling, molecular simulation setup and implementation on supercomputers, molecular visualization software, MATLAB/Python scripting, and scientific writing. The student will have a chance to participate in a collaborative project with experimental groups, and if successful, contribute to a scientific publication.
Development of a Novel Powder Feeding device and investigations into contaminates on TBCs in commercial jet engines
Primary PI: Eric Jordan / Ryan Cooper
Jet engines consume large amount of solid contaminates such as sand (CMAS) during operation due to the shear volume of air ingested. CMAS is very detrimental to engine life particularity for ceramic coatings (TBCs) used on hot section components. Scaling down this process to lab scale presents significant challenges in maintaining very fine feed rates of CMAS powders to simulate realistic ingestion rates . Commercially available products for this application do not exist. Students will help with development of a solution/product and investigate some of the effect these contaminates have on TBCs.
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