Week 1, 2 & 3

Hello everyone!!!

This was my experience for week 1, 2 & 3 for being a NEWT REU Intern

During my first week: I finally got the opportunity to meet with my mentor Ana Barrios. She is a Ph.D. student working in Dr. François Perrault’s lab. She attended University of El Paso and she is now at ASU working towards her Ph.D. in environmental engineering. She is always willing to help and answer my questions. The first couple of days, we worked on understating the protocol and what we would be doing for the summer. I will be working with the sulfidation process of silver nanoparticles. Her goal for me this summer was to feel comfortable with my research project and to be able to present the poster at the end of the program. In the first week, I started to work with RO membranes with the help of Ana and François. We began to functionalize the membranes that we would be working with. 

For my second week: I worked with François on the microbiology part of my project. I continued to work with my RO membranes, and E. coli. François kindly helped me to understand microscopy and plating of bacteria. I was able to use the microscope and take a couple images of the controlled and silver functionalized membranes. We used different dyes to see what bacteria was live and which was dead. We did the live/ dead bacteria assay for the controlled and silver membranes. We were not getting the results we wanted, so we decided to plate the bacteria and count in CFUs. We began to gather data. 

LEICA Microscope: Live/ Dead assay

Green= Live bacteria

Red = Dead bacteria  

For week 3: We started working with the sulfidizied membranes. We continued to plate. Last week, we focused on gathering data for the controlled and silver functionalized membranes. This week, we would focused on working with the sulfidized membranes. We began to test out two different concentration of sulfur on the membrane. We will see which concentration will work best. We began with the one with the highest and lowest concentrations. This will give us an idea on which concentration would coat the silver nanoparticles best. 

Higher concentration Ag2S