Author: Abdussamad Akhter | Major: B.S. Biophysical Chemistry, B.A. Biology | Semester: Fall 2024
My name is Abdussamad Akhter. I am a senior Honors College Fellow in the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences majoring in Biophysical Chemistry and Biology. After graduating, I hope to attend medical school and become a physician. Since Spring 2023, I have been doing research in the Chemistry department under Dr. Ryan Tian, and I am currently finishing my first semester of the Honors College Grant.
A chemistry course project first semester of my freshman year led me to explore how researchers at the University of Arkansas were delving deep into new fields in chemistry. Nanomaterial based chemistry seemed like it provided endless possibilities, with applications ranging from energy production to biomedical engineering. After meeting with different faculty members in the Chemistry department, Dr. Tian intrigued me by emphasizing the importance of his research and his personal commitment to advancing the field. His work in the application of nanomaterials to drug delivery and bone scaffolding interested me because of the unique chemistry required to research it as well as the interdisciplinary approach of having to understanding biology and physics.
Different nanomaterials have shown promising use in biomedical applications, such as bone tissue engineering. Using nanomaterials in bone regeneration boosts osteoblast cell recruitment, improves surface energy and protein adsorption, and improves X-ray imaging. Through extensive research we have successfully produced nanomaterials coated or doped with different elements, thus altering their mechanical properties and potentially enhancing their applicability in bone scaffolding. Understanding how these nanomaterials behave electrically could predict how they perform as nanoscale substitutes of natural bone. Thus, I have been investigating the electrochemical performance of altered nanomaterials to see if certain metrics could correlate with the materials’ performance in bone regeneration. This would provide researchers a fast-screening method to test nanomaterials, as compared to the lengthy and resource intensive process of in vitro testing.
Dr. Tian was essential in providing guidance and support for the project, and his graduate student Yang Tian was instrumental in helping me succeed in the research so far. We have faced and overcome several challenges while synthesizing and researching nanomaterials. Difficulty in coating electrochemical sensors required a trial and error of the ratio of mixtures to successfully test the materials, and hydrothermal synthesis of the materials required a several weeklong process of synthesizing, imaging, and testing. This last semester and the time prior to the start of the semester, I ensured that the nanomaterials I wanted to investigate were successfully synthesized and imaged with the help of Yang Tian. Then, I ran electrochemical tests such as cyclic voltammetry and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. I have spent the majority of this semester analyzing over one hundred charts and data from the tests to establish quantifiable metrics for the electrochemical performance of the nanomaterials, such as the diffusion coefficients and charge transfer resistance.
Over the course of my final semester, I hope to use the metrics I found over the last several months to correlate them with in vitro results for cell proliferation. I will use existing data and perform my own in vitro testing with the different nanomaterials. This would help predict how the electrochemistry correlates with osteogenic properties.