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Avery England<\/strong> is a Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry. Her thesis advisor, Prof <\/strong><\/a>Scott Collins<\/strong><\/a>, says “Avery is delightful to work with. She is a dedicated and diligent student with an eclectic curiosity that drives her research with intriguing perspectives.”<\/p>\n Avery shared her path to a Ph.D. program and her interest in nanoscience: <\/p>\n ___________________________________________________________________________<\/span><\/p>\n As a chemistry student, I have always found the properties of matter at a molecular level enticing. However, after taking Dr. Collins\u2019s nanoscience course in the fall of 2021, I began to appreciate how much of an impact something nanosized can make. During that semester, I approached Dr. Collins regarding research opportunities in nanoscience, and not long after, he introduced me to ways we can controllably synthesize nanomaterials using microtechnology. Upon joining the Smith\/Collins research group, I began training in microfabrication, nanoparticle synthesis, and various characterization techniques of nanosized materials. As my knowledge of nanoscience grew, I began to appreciate the advantages of a field encompassing various disciplines, such as chemistry, physics, engineering, material science, biology, and medicine, allowing many opportunities for collaboration and expanding my knowledge outside my chosen field. The following semester I would begin working in the Smith\/Collins research lab, fabricating microfluidic technology to study lipid nanoparticle synthesis for drug encapsulation and delivery. <\/p>\n The project I am working on involves implementing a novel microfluidic mixer to synthesize drug-delivering lipid nanoparticles. This microfluidic device consists of a 1mm diameter turbine etched onto a silicon chip that can homogenously mix two reactants within 50 \u00b5s using a hydrodynamically driven rotor spinning at approximately 30,000 rpm. Experimental control over parameters has allowed phosphatidylcholine\/choline liposomes between 90 nm \u2013 150 nm in diameter to be selectively synthesized. We intend to do a comparative study to determine the efficiency of our lipid nanoparticles synthesized on a chip for drug encapsulation and delivery. While our microfluidic device has been used previously in our research group for the synthesis of ultra-small silver nanoparticles, this is the first work done in our group to investigate how modifications of our device can enhance liposome drug encapsulation and delivery. In the future, I plan to combine the microfluidic turbine used to synthesize lipid nanoparticles with our research group\u2019s cells-on-a-chip microfluidic cell culture platform enabling us to achieve spatiotemporal control of a chemical environment to study the effect of various drug concentrations simultaneously within a single microfluidic device.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Avery England is a Ph.D. candidate in Chemistry. Her thesis advisor, Prof Scott Collins, says “Avery is delightful to work with. She is a dedicated and diligent student with an eclectic curiosity that drives her research with intriguing perspectives.” Avery shared her path to a Ph.D. program and her interest in nanoscience: ___________________________________________________________________________ As a chemistry student, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"8","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","spc_primary_category":0},"categories":[7,10,9,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-45990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-news","category-research","category-student"],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":7,"label":"Education"},{"value":10,"label":"News"},{"value":9,"label":"Research"},{"value":8,"label":"Student"}]},"featured_image_src_large":false,"author_info":{"display_name":"","author_link":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/author\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":7,"name":"Education","slug":"education","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":7,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":62,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":7,"category_count":62,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Education","category_nicename":"education","category_parent":0},{"term_id":10,"name":"News","slug":"news","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":10,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":67,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":10,"category_count":67,"category_description":"","cat_name":"News","category_nicename":"news","category_parent":0},{"term_id":9,"name":"Research","slug":"research","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":9,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":64,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":9,"category_count":64,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Research","category_nicename":"research","category_parent":0},{"term_id":8,"name":"Student","slug":"student","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":8,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":38,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":8,"category_count":38,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Student","category_nicename":"student","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2116"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45990"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45990\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46018,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45990\/revisions\/46018"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/umaine.edu\/medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}