May 3, 2010 - blue - The University of Texas at Brownsville

The Collegian On Campus
May 3, 2010 • Page 15
Chemistry majors seek to round out their experience
By David Boon
Staff Writer
This summer, four chemistry students
are heading out of town to participate in
other institutions’ research internships.
Seniors Rose Alvarez, Alan Gracia and
July Enriquez and junior Abraham Ruiz
have all found homes away from home for
the summer.
Ruiz is going to the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology to study with the
research group led by Professor Stephen
L. Buchwald. In December, Times Higher
Education named Buchwald the top U.S.
chemist of the 1999-2009 decade, as he
had more citations per paper than any other
researcher.
Of the 500 people who applied to the
minority-serving internship, only 27 were
accepted.
“I didn’t believe it,” Ruiz said of when
he first got the acceptance letter. “This
program in the beginning of March said,
‘Congratulations, you’re in it,’ and I’m
like, ‘What? Are you serious?’ I guess back
then it didn’t hit me, and now—it’s hitting
me.”
Ruiz will be working on the optimization
of synthesizing carbon bonds.
“It’s more kind of like the basic
foundation of organic chemistry,” he
said. “They’re trying to make carboncarbon
bonds, carbon-noncarbon bonds,
and they’re trying to make new ways for
creating them.”
The big decision after his bachelor’s
degree, Ruiz said, will be choosing between
going the research track or heading to
pharmacy school.
Manuel Reyna/Collegian
Chemistry majors (from left) Rose Alvarez, July Enriquez, Abraham Ruiz and Alan Gracia have been accepted
into summer research programs at other universities.
Enriquez is headed to Texas A&M
University in College Station to work with
Professor Joe Zhou. The title of the project
is “Preparation of porous metal frameworks
for vehicular hydrogen storage and carbon
sequestration.”
The project calls for balancing high
levels of carbon in the environment.
“Sometimes in the environment, the
high levels of carbon [are] bad,” she said.
“But sometimes it’s good. For example, in
marine chemistry, British coral calls for
concentrations of carbon. This time, I have
to keep it.”
The internship will integrate several
types of chemistry. When speaking of the
upcoming internship, Enriquez said she is
nervous, but excited.
“I’m nervous because I’m really [into]
analytical chemistry and that’s it,” Enriquez
said. “[The project is] very complex,
so I have to know organic chemistry,
biochemistry.”
She graduates in the fall and plans to
specialize in environmental chemistry in
her graduate studies.
Alvarez and Gracia will both participate
in the Provost’s Summer Program, which
allows them to head to the University of
Texas-San Antonio.
“I think it will be really neat, because
we’re going to be left on our own,” Alvarez
said. “I think it’ll feel a little like when we
go to grad school and we put on our own
projects by ourselves, so I think it will also
prepare me for grad school and what field
I want to take.”
Their work will focus on bioinorganic
chemistry under Professor Donald Kurtz,
whom Alvarez describes as “a really well
known bioinorganic professor.”
“In general, what we’re going to be
doing is working with water splitting and
nanotechnology, but in a bio essence,”
she said. “We’re going to be focusing on
a certain protein that exists in heme. We’re
going to be trying to split water molecules
in that protein or using that protein.”
A “heme” is a type of protein based on
iron, Alvarez said. An example can be
found in the human body’s hemoglobin.
Both students call the acceptance into the
program a relief, as it seems like a good fit.
“I thought it was just a great experience
just to be working with such a great
professor,” Gracia said.
Alvarez plans to work on inorganic
chemistry for her graduate studies. Gracia,
like Ruiz, remains interested in either
a pharmacological route or a graduate
degree in organic chemistry, and said that
this internship will be the “final deciding
factor.”