Research Reflections from Oxford University by Catherine Cassou
This year there are two Notre Dame Science students studying in the highly selective study abroad program at Oxford University. The College of Science asked junior Catherine Cassou to reflect upon her undergraduate research experiences thus far, focusing particularly on how her experience at Oxford has enhanced her undergraduate science education.
My passion for science and desire to get involved in research began in my high school chemistry classes and a summer internship at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center's Marine Invasions Lab, where I studied the diversity of fouling organisms in the San Francisco Bay. Through research you can delve into a field completely and gain an understanding of a particular area of chemistry that you cannot attain in the classroom. Research gives you the experience of what it means to be a chemist.
At Notre Dame, I quickly was drawn to the area of analytical chemistry, my interest piqued by the theory behind the instruments that play a fundamental role in the work of chemists every day and the variety of their applications. For two summers, one under a NSF REU grant, I worked with Dr. Tomoko Komada at the Romberg Tiburon Center for Environmental Studies. There I worked on radiocarbon analysis of sediment and pore water samples from Santa Monica Basin, California, learning about such analytical techniques as UV/Vis spectrophotometry, flow injection analysis, and accelerator mass spectrometry.
I further developed my interest in mass spectrometry during a NSF REU at the University of California, Irvine, this past summer and presented a poster on this research at the December 2008 American Geophysical Union conference in San Francisco. Mass spectrometry played a key role in my work toward developing an accurate history of the concentrations of ethane (a greenhouse gas) in the atmosphere. During my senior year I hope to work for Notre Dame’s Dr. David Go on applications of mass spectrometry to areas such as environmental science and biomed.
In addition to mass spectrometry, the analytical method of atomic force microscopy (AFM) has played an important role in my research experience thus far. AFM, a type of micron-scale imaging, is important to the study of surface chemistry. Throughout my sophomore year doing undergraduate research on biosensors with Notre Dame’s Dr. Marya Lieberman, I used AFM to analyze monolayers of 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) on gallium nitride (GaN)/sapphire that I had grown under different conditions, as well as analyze the stability of these monolayers in water to simulate the biosensor’s behavior if used on an aqueous sample. I presented a poster on this research at the 2007 Purdue, Indiana, and Notre Dame Universities – PINDU – Inorganic Chemistry Conference, and gave a talk on this research at the 2008 College of Science Joint Annual Meeting – COS JAM.
Now, during my junior year abroad at Oxford University, I will have the opportunity of working under Dr. Hugh Cartwright to design a lab project that demonstrates the uses of AFM for Oxford’s undergraduate chemistry majors. During this time I will be able to learn about the AFM method on a more fundamental level at the same time I’m taking advantage of Oxford’s many other academic features: lectures from world experts in their field, tutorials of only three to four students with Oxford Ph.D.s who challenge and guide you through the material, and studying at a university where some of the greatest discoveries in chemistry were made. Oxford's interest in chemistry is underscored by the Queen's brand new £60 million Chemistry Research Laboratory. While my goal of a Ph.D. in Chemistry with a focus on analytical chemistry will take many more years of hard work, this year at Oxford and my research experiences during the last few years at Notre Dame will be an inspiration for the rest of my career.
Catherine Cassou,
University of Notre Dame junior
The University of Notre Dame’s Oxford Program The Oxford Program provides seven Notre Dame students the opportunity to spend one year studying at New College, Oxford. While at New College, students participate in Oxford’s renowned tutorial system. They work one on one with Oxford tutors to pursue their academic interests in great depth. Tutors are full-time faculty at Oxford and represent some of the premier scholars in their fields.
