Name: Rubia Fernandes
Class Year: 2023
Major: Chemistry
Minor: Environmental Studies
Hometown: Medford, MA
Internship Organization: Bryn Mawr College
Job Title: Undergraduate Researcher
Location: Bryn Mawr, PA
What’s happening at your internship? We would love to hear what kind of work you are doing!
In my internship, I am working on synthesizing a ruthenium-based organometallic compound with a carboxylic acid bipyridine component attached. The goal of my project is to combine two steps of the hydrogen energy cycle, the photosynthesizer and electron relay component, to facilitate the efficiency of the cycle. Therefore, the ruthenium compound that I am focusing on this summer will serve as the photosynthesizer component of what will eventually become a bimetallic transition metal complex with ruthenium and rhodium transition metal centers.
In addition to working on the core components of my research project, I have been testing out the COMU coupling procedure that I will be using to combine the ruthenium and rhodium organometallic complexes through an amide bond. From these successful experiments, I have confidence that the amide and carboxylic acid bipyridine compounds that I synthesized would be couple together successfully.
Why did you apply for this internship?
I applied for this internship because I was considering a career in research and I knew that having experience in the area would be important for me, especially since I was not completely sure whether it would be the right path for me. I am grateful to have had this experience and see what a full-time research career based in laboratory work is like.
What is most rewarding about your internship?
The most rewarding part of my internship has been to finally see some progress on the project that I have been working on for the past year. During this summer, I refined some of the process of producing a carboxylic acid pyridine compound. I increased my yield from what was previously less than 1 milligrams to a yield of 100 milligrams total from two sets of recovery. When this happened, I was extremely proud of myself and I am so excited to finally see sone progress!
This has been the highlight of my experience this summer because the synthesize was one that I repeated over a dozen times and I managed to always get extremely low yield amounts at the last step every time. It took me so long to be able to problem solve what the issue was but I finally figured out something that worked.
Can you talk about the skills you are learning and why they are important to you?
One of the key skills that I have learned from my internship has been to problem-solve through any issue that I encountered. I was not always able to solve every problem that I encountered, however, when I did, I felt very accomplished about it. This is why I consider increasing the yield of my carboxylic acid pyridine compound to be the most rewarding part of my internship experience.
I think that it is very important to have a skill such as problem-solving because it so versatile and can be applied to so many job roles. Since I will be pursuing engineering in the future, being a great problem solver is very relevant to this type of career. In addition, when working in a team, I know that I will be able to contribute to coming up with a solution to the problem that we are tackling because of my extensive research experience.
Visit the Summer Internship Stories page to read more about student internship experiences.