Gaining Hands-on Experience

Amanda Roof

Amanda Roof (’06)                 

Many students at Bucknell University would testify that undergraduate research comes to be one of the highlights of their academic careers. For Amanda Roof (’06), a senior cell biology/biochemistry major, her experience has proven to be all that and more during her 3 years as part of a research team under Professor Eric Tillman.

Roof began to do research in Tillman’s polymerization lab during her sophomore year at Bucknell. While other students have come and gone, she has been working on the same polymer synthesis research for the duration of her time in the laboratory. The work has evolved, however, as Roof and Tillman began implementing their experiment and finding some interesting results.

The research, funded by a Research Corporation grant, was centered around organic and polymer synthesis – that is, Roof was trying to grow a polymer in a controlled way, from a functional group that would be attached at end of the polymer. She originally attempted to make a new "initiating system" (growing a polymer off a specific molecule – in this case, a chromophore molecule) by a process called atom transfer radical polymerization. Roof spent her first semester creating the initiator molecule, a dimer molecule (consisting of two identical chromophore molecules), then proceeded to attempt to grow the polymer off the dimer.

As Roof said, though, "That’s where we started to see problems." She found that the initiator molecule changed states, possibly because it broke apart during polymerization. At this stage, Roof changed the direction of her research and began examining this unexpected reaction. She found that the polymer actually is attached to the molecule, but not in the manner hypothesized. In analyzing the new observations, Roof and Tillman, a chemistry professor in his fourth year at Bucknell, believe that they have found the mechanistic pathways that explain these unexpected results.

Amanda entered Bucknell as a biology major with aspirations to attend medical school and become a physician. In light of her experiences in undergraduate research, Roof said, "Seeing the process of how publications work and how research actually proceeds, it has confirmed my desire to go into medicine and do research on the side." She has found her years of research to be an invaluable part of her undergraduate experience, and has also enjoyed collaborating with her peers and Bucknell faculty.

Roof presented a poster at the annual American Chemical Society conference after her first year of research. At the conference, Roof was able to meet the man behind the development of the polymer growth process. "It was an honor to meet him…it was kind of unreal," she said. The collaborative research, led by Roof and Tillman, has recently been accepted for publication in the journal Polymer. Roof is currently working on an honors thesis on the same topic.