Alexander Koers ’23 — This summer was my second working with Dr. Paul Schmitt in his lab researching agrochemical applications of second harmonic generation microscopy. In English, we are using an experimental microscopy technique for testing fungicidal additives. This has been an amazing opportunity for me to learn practical lab skills, as well as getting hands on experience in what it means to conduct academic research. The day-to-day duties of research are hard to appreciate until you go and do it. I want to pursue a doctorate in Chemistry. Having research opportunities with potential of publishing before I graduate will be instrumental when I begin filling out graduate program applications next spring.
My job this summer primarily involved the brand-new liquid chromatography single quadrupole mass spectrometer that the Chemistry department purchased in 2020. With the help of Dr. Schmitt, we designed a set of methods that we programed into the driver software to get specific data regarding the absorption effectiveness of our compound of interest. We are working with a fungicide that only functions once processed within the mitochondria of plant cells. To test the effectiveness of several additives whose job is to assist the active ingredient with entering the plant, supplied by our sponsor Corteva Agriscience, we grew young wheatgrass plants and treated them with our fungicide mixture. We would then wait from 2-72 hours then freeze the plants in liquid nitrogen, grind them into a powder, then extract the soluble compounds into a mobile phase and inject that into our mass spectrometer. This instrument would then tell us the concentration of our selected compounds over time, which can be integrated to show us relative concentrations of the target compounds at given timepoints. When all timepoints are taken together we can easily determine effectiveness of selected additives.
I would like to thank the Wabash Chemistry department for creating the internship programs they have, as the accessibility of student research provided to us is unrivaled at other institutions. As well I would like to thank my lab partners, Eric Green ’24 and Alex Litts ‘24 who were instrumental in our lab’s great successes this summer. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. Paul Schmitt for making this summer possible. His leadership and genuine passion for the research at hand were vital to creating a productive and fun working environment.
