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Chemistry Research Lab Helps Make Progress in Neuroscience

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Arianna Schuck | Staff Writer

Chemistry professor Nasri Nesnas runs a research lab on Florida Tech’s campus. The lab focuses on caged molecules, used in neuroscience labs to help map neuron locations and functions.

A caged molecule is activated by light, as described by Nesnas.

“We make molecules that absorb light for specific functions, whether it’s understanding neural connections or understanding the human vision,” Nesnas said.

While exact numbers vary among experts in the field, the human brain is usually cited as containing 86 billion neurons, all connecting to each other trillions of times. A report from the Stanford University Medical Center states that there are over 125 trillion synapses — the connections between neurons — in the cerebral cortex alone. 

A rotary evaporator used to heat dry samples. Photo // Arianna Schuck

Nesnas said that in recent years, the lab was able to explain how a certain molecule responded to light and functioned which will help in discovering a more efficient molecule next.

“On a daily basis in the lab, I am reading articles, planning my next synthesis, or performing synthesis/analysis of compounds,” said Alexzandriea van Hoekelen, a Ph.D student working in the lab, in an emailed response. “My favorite part of the lab is constantly learning new things.”

Caylin Lepak is a sophomore majoring in genomics and molecular genetics who works as an undergraduate research assistant in the lab. 

Lepak said that her daily tasks in the lab include weighing and measuring reactants and solvents, and researching current work in related fields.

She observes advanced techniques performed by graduate students such as high performance liquid chromatography, or HPLC, and nuclear magnetic resonance, or NMR. The MRI scan many people have in their life is one application of NMR.

“I want to learn skills such as how to run HPLC, NMR, and other advanced chemistry techniques on my own and analyze the results from these tests,” Lepak said. “I also hope to learn how to write and publish articles that can make a significant contribution to the scientific community.”

Residence communities make dreams come true

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Students chat in their LLC lounge with a plane of Gemini on the table.

Florida Tech students are making their dreams become reality as they now have the opportunity to be more immersed in the world of aeronautics and aerospace engineering.

“I was talking to somebody in the Residence Life department at the time, mentioning that I would like to stay involved in the department somehow even though I was moving over to the College of Aeronautics,” said Warren Pittorie, an instructor in the College of Aeronautics and a former resident director. “I didn’t hear from the department for a few weeks, then somebody came up with the idea to start another living-learning community.”

The aviation living community—Let’s Fly—was established on the second floor of Brownlie Hall and took in freshmen aviation and aerospace engineering students this fall.

Pittorie explained that an LLC is where students are placed together on a floor or within a building based on a common majors, common interests or common program affiliations.

The Let’s Fly LLC is the third LLC on campus, joining the Women in STEM and the Honors College LLC.

Keeping with the theme of aviation, Pittorie reached out to College of Aeronautics alumni and asked for donations to decorate the hall.

“Those that did reach out had a lot of stuff to donate,” Pittorie said. “We have a bookshelf with a couple aviation books, and we put a lot of study tables up there as well, rather than a lounge to hang out and watch tv.”

Both RA’s in Brownlie hall, Kerrington Witherspoon and Michaela Salazar, are aviation students.

Witherspoon, a sophomore, said, “I have the same responsibilities as other RA’s. We’re trying to plan trips to get students to Melbourne airport, down to Vero Beach to the Piper manufacturing facility, Cape Canaveral and guest speakers.”

Pittorie explained that although the events are targeted towards the LLC students, others would also be able to participate.

Witherspoon said that so far the residents are enjoying the LLC and utilizing the common area to hang out and study.

Thus, the newly added LLC on campus has connected more students in a comfortable living space where they can achieve success above and beyond.

Panthers solve real-world problems

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Malia Ashmead, Jamison Burch and Emanuel Rossi with the Osiris bioreactor.

Students utilized their knowledge gained through their years at Florida Tech to find solutions to real-world problems and present them at the Northrop Grumman Student Design and Research Showcase.

The event took place on April 12 at the Clemente Center.

“This was the first time that we could really put all of our knowledge to use and see everything we have learned since freshman year,” Emily Perron, an ocean engineering major, said.

Perron’s group, Reef Life, created an artificial reef that creates a perfect surf while also protecting the shoreline and promoting coral growth.

Perron said that the modular design was based off of LEGOs so the reef could be configured in any shape.

“It feels really great to have won Best in Show for Ocean Engineering and to know that someone really appreciated our hard work,” Perron said. “I’m very grateful.”

Reef Life placed first in their category, but success did not come without challenges.

Emily Perron and Stephen Hammond with their artificial reef, Reel Life.

“Originally we tried 3D printing our blocks, and they took 20 hours each to make and kept failing,” Perron said. “We had to make 100 of these blocks, so we had to find a different method of designing.”

Reef Life opted to use molds instead of printing to speed up their manufacturing process.

Dev Patel, an aerospace engineering major, presented the Perching Unmanned Monitoring Aircraft or PUMA.

PUMA can act as both a rotorcraft and a fixed wing aircraft, giving it increased speed and maneuverability.

The aircraft has a claw-like landing gear, which allows it to perch like a bird.

“It’s designed to act as a mobile services platform for emergency service providers,” Patel said.

Computer engineering major, Ahmed Okasha and his team designed an on-board diagnostic tool for the formula electric team.

“Once they build the car, the engineers would basically just walk up and plug in the device to the car and be able to get all the readings that they need,” Okasha said.

The device would give battery voltage, temperature and charging state readings.

Okasha said that in the future, a radio can be added to the device so that it can stay on the car permanently and send info back to the engineers while it’s racing.

“It [completing senior design] feels satisfying, but there’s always that one part of you that feels as if you could have done more,” Okasha said.

Cooper Mitchell, an ocean engineering student, and his team built the foundation vessel SWATH. SWATH is a Small Waterplane Area Twin Hole vessel was built to bridge the gap between large vessels and smaller vessels with not much over complications.

Mitchell’s project reached outside of ocean engineering and recruited the help of aerospace, electrical and computer engineers.

“It’s a great culmination of my ocean engineering degree,” Mitchell said. “We did coastal process, naval architecture, instrumentation, material science and ship design and construction. It showed me to have a full range of experience to take with me into the job market.”

Distress in the Air: Florida Tech’s take on the Boeing 737

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Within the past five months, Boeing has had two 737 Air Max 8’s crash.

Most recently, the Ethiopian airline crash that killed all 157 members on board caused a worldwide grounding of the Boeing model.

Carlos Obregon, a junior majoring in aeronautical science with flight, has been discussing the components of flight failure in the classroom and relating them to the crashes of the Boeing 737’s and how they are relevant to his field of study.

“In my advanced aircraft systems class we talked about how flight systems and controls can cause malfunctions and enroute flight problems,” Obregon said. “We debated on how the software stalling function and overriding features on the model and learned that this could have been the potential reasoning for the planes to crash.”

Pat Spangler, a junior in aeronautical science with an associates degree in air traffic control, was concerned about the safety dilemma that these crashes have drawn attention to and how aviation management is handling it.

In Spangler’s opinion, the Federal Aviation Administration and President Trump could have handled the situation better, but the aviation industry is still the safest mode of transportation and he stands by it.

“Safety is obviously one of the top priorities in the aviation industry, as it should be,” Spangler said. “One protocol put into place by the FAA that I think is essential to the job is a computer test every air traffic controller is required to take on a recurring two-month basis to remain updated on safety and eligible for the job.”

The FAA is responsible for regulating aviation and promoting safety.

However, in recent light of the situation the administration has been criticized by many as the United States was one of the last nations to decide not to fly the 737’s.

Aviation safety regulators in the European Union, China, Australia and the U.K. made the call to not fly the planes ahead of the U.S.

According to prior reports from The New York Times, the delay in the call for Trump to ground the Boeing models was deemed as “a bit too late” by many passengers and pilots.

It’s not just current aviation students that are especially affected by the grounding of the 737’s but also alumni that have entered the industry.

Jared Goodlaw graduated from Florida Tech in 2017 with a degree in aviation management with flight.

He has worked for a regional airliner in the past but is currently flying private jetliners.

Goodlaw stated that the FAA has released no private statements or reports to any licensed pilots in regards to how the situation is being handled nor any other investigative details.

Goodlaw had expectations of announcements directly to all private and commercial licensed pilots from Boeing or the FAA in wake of both incidents.

However, both organizations have failed to communicate if there are any plans underway requiring pilots to complete more training and/or simulations before anymore 737’s are cleared to take off again.

The consensus amongst Spangler, Obregon and Goodlaw is that they all feel their training and studies regarding flight emergencies and preparation is well documented in the Florida Tech aviation curriculum.

All three stated that they still feel safe to work in the industry as it is a very reactive field.

Incidents like this are thoroughly investigated, responsibility is held accountable for and updates and corrections are made as soon as possible.

Pilots are not the only people concerned about the Boeing 737’s.

CBS News reported that approximately 8,600 flights use the Boeing 737 Max 8 in a typical week of travel.

Furthermore, Boeing released an announcement saying that models will be grounded for at least three months.

Travelers may experience more travel and flight difficulties than they expected.

Charles Bryant, a business professor and the manager in charge of Florida Tech’s study abroad program to Spain, is one example of these worried travelers.

“With the Boeing 737’s being grounded, myself and those participating in the Spain study abroad program are having to look at different airport destinations within Spain,” Bryant said. “For example, instead of flying out of a smaller airport in the country like Malaga as we had originally planned, we are looking at other options that have more flight availability in bigger airports like Barcelona. Yet, this adds more planning and financial stress as the travel date in early June arrives closer and closer.”

Bryant draws attention to another issue: If he is having troubles finding flights for a group of roughly 20 or so people, it will likely be hard for the immense number of international students on campus to find flights home at the end of the semester in early May.

The Boeing 737 investigations are still underway and officials have stated they are doing their best to remain honest with the general public as they are well aware of the pressing matters and concerns at hand.

Local robotics team to compete in Houston

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Voltage team during a repair in the middle of an event. Photo // Will Davies.

For the second time in three years, local Melbourne robotics team “Voltage” will be attending the FIRST Championship Houston competition in Texas.

The robotics season officially began in January and after their six-week building period, the robots competed with other Florida teams at the UCF stadium to start the year.

The teams are hosted at high schools around the area, and the closest one to campus is the Voltage team.

Florida Tech has its own Vex robotics team, which differs from FCH in size and other aspects.

Ripley Smith, a current Florida Tech student, and Will Davies, a Florida Tech alumni, both mentor the local high school team and have been in robotics for a long time.

“There are a literally thousands of schools across America that participate in FCH and Vex, but I prefer FCH because there is more you can do and bigger scale parts that use industry systems in the real world,” Davies said.

The robotics high school program allows mentors from any background that have helpful engineering knowledge and have no age restrictions.

Davies has been doing robotics since 2006 and he mentored the Voltage team during his entire time enrolled at Florida Tech and afterward staying in Melbourne.

“Robotics has programs such as FTC, First Tech Challenge, and FLL, First Lego League, that potentially could have somebody doing robotics from grade school past college,” Davies said.

Smith discovered Voltage while still living in Georgia competing for robotics during high school, and she has been involved since 2005.

Smith said, “Robotics is definitely a big part of my life since I’ve been doing it so long, and finding Voltage persuaded me to come to Florida Tech.”

Smith is currently president of the First Robotics Club here at Florida Tech.

While the club currently consists of only a couple members, Smith said emails are being exchanged with more students that are interested.

Florida Tech also has a FIRST scholarship for inspiring and recognition in science and technology, which Smith won through her robotics team in Atlanta.

Smith is working to bring FCH robotics to Florida Tech.

“It is also a great opportunity for collaboration and integrating communities,” Smith said. “There were some schools in Orlando that needed help finishing their robot in time, which we gladly provided.”

Davies said, “I’m excited. This year we upgraded with brush-less motors that are faster and stronger and lidar sensors for better visual processing.”

The first 15 seconds of competition are automated. Then, the remaining two minutes are spent controlling the robot on the course to collect as many points as possible by completing tasks.

Kevben Belastegui, a junior in mechanical engineering, competes on a team called Moose 1065.

“I could have went and joined Voltage, but in my opinion, I think Moose is handled and driven more by their mentors rather than helping the students and letting them run the team,” Belastegui said. “So it is more fun for me on Moose.”

FCH has programs available for mentors and students in schools’ extracurricular programs globally.

The season goes until May when they have their finals in Houston and about 5,000 students of teams from all over the world will be displaying their robots for the final point tally.

At each region, there are around 60 teams, which is about the number of teams that were at UCF.

Florida is a regional state as opposed to a district state such as Georgia and countries like Australia.

For district states, winning a district will earn a ticket to Championship Houston but for regional states, it is a bit more difficult as they typically have fewer number teams attending and have other contests to win to make it to Championship Houston, more than just point total.

According to Smith, the Chairman’s award is the most prestigious. “The award goes to the team that impacts robotics the most outside of the competition, so one year the team that won it hosted a drone competition that was set up for their community”.

Smith hopes to integrate the robotics community with Florida Tech further in the future and Alumni such as Will Davies and Daniel Kemp successfully represent the Florida Tech with their help mentoring the team, and mentoring a team is as easy as being passionate for robotics.

“People such as Lonnie Johnson, who owns the patents for nerf guns and super soakers, and Dean Kamen, who owns patent for the segway, attend worlds consistently and appear at competitions all the time,” said Smith.

“Our success is well celebrated and we’re all happy to go to [Championship Houston], but there was a lot of success in our whole area which we work with, so there is a lot to be glad about,” said Davis.

Students researching high energy particle physics

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Sarah Arends, GEM Hardware, working on a component in the Experimental Physics Hall. Photo by Hohlmann Research Group

Florida Tech physics department keeps up with the latest technology as the Muon Tomography Station is utilized for detecting particles no bigger than an electron.

The group research is conducted by Marcus Holmann, a physics professor who also works with CERN over online meetings.

CERN is the European Council for Nuclear Research – in French it translates to “Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire” – in which the acronym was devised.

CERN is the one the world’s most renown centers of scientific research and specialize with nuclear reactions, studying the behavior of individual particles and atoms.

The organization began in 2008, the same time the studies for Holmann and Florida Tech had been approved.

The similar studies here at Florida Tech examine the nuclear behavior of muons coming from high energy activity from elements such as uranium.

A muon is an unstable subatomic particle of the same class as an electron, but with a mass around 200 times greater.

Muons make up much of the cosmic radiation reaching the earth’s surface.

The building blocks of life and quantum theory are intertwined by understanding the fundamental behavior of the elements of life at their smallest component, we can better understand and predict the world around us and help us figure out relationships between particles and essentially interpret the universe.

The building blocks are defined in what’s called: The Standard Model of Particle Physics.

The Muon tomography station can detect particles of the same size as the Standard Model defines, and can read the spin and energy of the particle to decipher where it came from.

A scatter plot with many colors is depicted and read to determine whether the muon came from the sun, or from a different source of super high energy such as a particle accelerator, or nuclear compounds.

“I’ve been a fan of CERN and their YouTube videos since I began liking physics, and I’m really excited to be working on projects that closely relate to their work.” said Tommy Walker, junior physics major.

Muons happen naturally when a cosmic ray hits the atmosphere at a high energy and muons then get showered and dispersed.

The left plate inside the MTS picks up muons at a higher rate and varies while the right stays constant.

This means that muons decay in the middle of the MTS and did not originate from a large source like the sun.

“There are different types of energy from different reactions, and the direction of the energy can be used to find the mass.” Holmann said. “These machines are used and can catch people smuggling nuclear material.”

Detecting a muon also implies figuring out the angle from which it may have been deflected on, if there was lead to shield, it can be read by the scattering patterns in the 3D imaging detector.

The lab for MTS has been mainly under Holmann’s provision since around 2008 and received funding from the Department of Homeland Security for around four years, however not anymore.

Physics major Merrick Lavinsky, junior, was a part of the research group that was building the MTS during his freshman year at Florida Tech.

Lavinsky was one of five in a group, under professor Francisco Yumiceva, dedicated to building a machine they knew was an important facet to past and future research development bigger than the scope of only Florida Tech.

“We finished most of the project during my freshman year, but with the ongoing process of what had been put in before me and what we’re going to get after the project,” said Lavinsky. “We all knew it was on a big scale of importance with how accurate everything needed to be.”

At such a small scale of detection, the accuracy is very important to the success of the readings.

Tommy Walker, junior, is a physics major who currently works with the MTS in Holmann’s research.

“I had to check and make sure Dr. Holmann was okay about us talking about this,” Walker said.

Equipment used by the research team to help aid in the detection of muon particles. Photo by Seamus Burns.

The components of this material, such as many of the aerospace companies, have confidential research and information for their services that could be considered proprietary for companies; in some cases where research is on a global scale, they may not be allowed to talk about it so openly.

The research is highly prominent in further developing quantum theory as well as understanding fundamental nuclear functionality and exactly how dangerous it can be.

With connections to CERN, the prestige given to the pool of intelligence where this research is coming and going cannot be overstated.

Walker said, “The reason I joined is to use subatomic particles that an average person hasn’t heard of, to find hidden objects.”

Almost investigative, the research group aims at identifying exactly where and how a muon came from, thus by reading its position and scattering map with the tomography detectors.

Senior physics major, Akshath Wikramanayake said, “It would be nice if everyone shared the same enthusiasm for particle physics. I actually think Dr. Holmann was the reason for Consensus coming to visit our campus.”

Particle Physics rapper Consensus had visited Florida Tech and hosted a concert at the pantherium in November of last semester.

He was mostly swayed by the incredibly up to date science and research on campus, largely due to Holmann, said Wikramanayake.

The rapper focuses on spreading the message of science and raps about quantum theory and particle physics.

The research group hopes to continue bringing awareness and interest into the program.