Amount of funding awarded
7500
Budget Report
View budget report.
How the program has supported you
This program has funded the necessary reagents and tools required for work in a laboratory pursuing student-led research. This freedom has allowed students to truly engage with the process of innovation as well as providing insight into the inner workings of how nanotech laboratories function. It supported our team’s ability to innovate and explore novel solutions that would not be normally available in a more academic setting. We are able to pose our own research questions, work through developing protocol-based solutions, interpret complex and varied results, while developing skills requiring extensive lab experience. This gave us a greater appreciation and a deeper understanding of the inner workings of techniques we previously only had theoretical knowledge of. Student engagement at this level of scientific sophistication has been made possible in part of the support provided by this program.
Outcomes
The project’s main goal is to create a nanorobotic arm out of DNA origami with the ability to be tunable. The structure formation requires heavy literature research to understand the complexities of the design of the nanorobotic arm. The design required the use of new software programs and taught students how to seek resources and guidance for unfamiliar systems. As the structure was to be created in the lab, this required a high understanding of analyzing and devising protocols and being equipped with the necessary technical skills. Our team of 39 undergraduate students is given an opportunity to develop these skills in wet-lab, research proposals, and technical communication. The project was selected amongst research proposals created by our members, where each proposal was developed with guidance and presented in an academic setting. Our members are then given many opportunities in the laboratory to apply the techniques they have learned to create the structure, and thus gain various long-term lab skills and habits.
