Gaining Hands-on Experience

Jeff McKnight, Alyssa Roland, Dewey Kang

Jeff McKnight (06), Alyssa Roland (07), Dewey Kang (07)

Professor Eric Tillman’s polymer synthesis laboratory can be a busy place on Friday afternoons. Tillman is the faculty advisor for several chemistry and biochemistry undergraduate research students at Bucknell University. The students work on a variety of projects that are in various stages of completion, from Amanda Roof, who will present her completed research at the American Chemical Society conference this spring, to Jeff McKnight, a senior Presidential Fellow preparing to publish his research, to Alyssa Roland and Dewey Kang who are in earlier stages of their work.

McKnight (2006) has been in Tillman’s lab for over three years. He began doing research in the summer as a rising sophomore, but was already no stranger to the laboratory setting. Jeff entered Bucknell with a Presidential Fellowship, a prestigious academic award that includes a 4-year research internship as a work-study style stipend; he researched through his freshman year before beginning his polymerization work.

Jeff’s research deals with polymer growth initiating systems. He has been trying to attach an amine group on the end of a polymer, a process with potential biological uses. "It is also analogous to some types of organic reagents. Putting [them] on the end of a polymer could make it [the polymer] better because you can usually do a lot more with a solid that can easily come out of solution," said McKnight of the desired properties of the new polymer.

The research is in its final stages as McKnight is working hard to prove the validity of their results. The results appear successful, but many journals require indisputable proof before the work can be published. McKnight is using a labeling technique called gel permeation chromatography to pinpoint the location/presence of the amine group.

McKnight will graduate from Bucknell in 2006 with a degree in chemistry and continue with his education. He feels that his undergraduate research experience will be invaluable in graduate school. "It’s pretty much a requirement now; that’s pretty much all you talk about at interviews – your research," said McKnight. He has applied to several graduate schools and was interviewed at Rochester, Tufts, Harvard, Hopkins, and MIT.

Two other students, Alissa Roland (2007) and Dewey Kang (2007), are working on related polymer growth projects in Tillman’s lab. Roland, a junior chemistry major, is studying the growth of polymers off of specific labels. She started by trying to grow the polymer with only sporadically successful results. The scope of the project has shifted to a troubleshooting process; that is, examining why she has encountered these anomalous results. Roland produced a poster in the early stages of the study with Louis Sarry (2005) and presented the findings at the American Chemical Society conference in 2004.

Kang is in an earlier stage in his research. The junior chemistry major has only been working for 2 semesters in Tillman’s lab. His project is based around organic polymer growth. He is trying to grow two separate polymers in different directions off the same carbon in a carbon chain. He has successfully added a single polymer to a carbon, and has proceeded to try to attach a second polymer to the same carbon. This project is an extension of two research projects published in recent years by masters degree students at Bucknell.

Faculty mentor Eric Tillman is a fourth year chemistry professor at Bucknell University. The funding for their projects comes from a variety of departmental and external grants. McKnight recently submitted a proposal for a large grant, and has been supported in the past by Bristol Meyer Squib, Dreyfus Foundation, and Merck. Roland and Kang have been funded by a faculty grant from the Petroleum Research Fund.