Crystal Lemus, a third year honors neuroscience major, recently attended and presented research at the 44th annual Naff Symposium at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. The symposium included many speakers including Vanderbilt University’s Dr. David Cliffel who led a talk titled “Electrochemically Instrumenting Organs on a Chip,” The University of Utah’s Dr. Shelley Minteer who spoke on “Enzymatic Bioelectrocatalysis: From Metabolic Pathways to Metabolons” and The University of Texas at Austin’s Dr. Richard Crooks who led a session on “Quantitative Electrohemical Detection of Analytes at Sub-Picomolar Levels using a Simple Paper Sensor.”
Lemus presented her poster on microfluidic devices that manipulate water pressure at the nano level to separate microspheres as well as yeast cells. “My research primarily focused on a way to simplify the production of microfluidic devices in order to increase access to college students,” she said. “It is always engaging to hear about other such projects going on such as the electrochemical detection using a simple paper sensor.”
While she is not pursuing academic research as a career, Lemus said she thoroughly enjoys the research process and describes it as the “creation of new knowledge.” After her graduation from Belmont, Lemus plans on attending medical school and hopes to be involved in public health.
