Six Students Participated in Guided Research Apprenticeship Program

This summer, six Holy Trinity students participated in a five-week Guided Research Apprenticeship program with Florida Institute of Technology (FIT).

 

Cameron Walcott worked one on one with Professor Keiron Hylton in the College of Business to study various aspects of marketing and business, including a case study on Chipotle restaurants. Meanwhile, John Ganiban, Kyle Go, Eamon Brennan, Chris Farid and Hari Dandapani worked with Dr. Joel A. Olson, Associate Professor of Chemistry, to use computational chemistry (quantum-level density functional theory) to investigate possible reaction mechanisms for a natural product compound. The tryptanthrin compound has been shown to have efficacy versus pathogens that cause malaria, leishmania, bacterial infections, and fungal infections.  Understanding the chemical reaction mechanisms for tryptanthrin will provide insight into the behavior of this versatile and potentially important compound.  

 

As part of a 12-year drug design project in the laboratory of Dr. Olson, the students used the Spartan’16 molecular modeling software suite to simulate possible reactions for the nitration of tryptanthrin (specifically, via electrophilic aromatic substitution). They quickly learned how to use the software, and they built hundreds of ‘poses’ (simulated arrangements of molecular reactants) to calculate reaction energies in order to find the most plausible reaction pathways.  By providing an understanding of the reaction pathways, this research will aid in the syntheses of chemical variations of tryptanthrins, perhaps leading to a compound that may be used as a drug to treat these infectious diseases.

 

This marks the fourth year that Holy Trinity students have been offered an exclusive guided research opportunity at FIT.