Research

Research Intern at Rottapel Lab Studying Autophagy Flux

Over this last summer, I worked as a research intern at the Rottapel Lab at the University Health Network . I conducted several experiments under the guidance of Dr. Pallavi Mathur to determine if perturbed lysosome-autophagosome colocalization underlies disturbed autophagy flux in KSR1KO cells. I did cell culture, immunofluorescence, confocal microscopy (25+ hours), image analysis and western blot.

Sophie_Presentation_PDF.pdf

Wastewater treatment in Bangladesh

In a hackathon, my team and I pitched AI-driven inventory management app to predict and prevent antibiotic waste. This was one avenue we found when doing an analysis of the problem.

The other was wastewater treatment. But a big issue here is the cost, which is disincentivizing when unsafe or informal fixes are cheaper and easier to access like dumping directly into water sources.

In the lab at school, I've been exploring various new biotechnologies to treat wastewater. See below for some of these projects and reports.

Generation of Current by Yeast Fermentation

I built a yeast fuel cell which uses yeast and glucose to generate electricity. This is modelled by current research into the use of yeast to generate electricity from cabron compounds in wastewater. Another experiment I plan on running soon is using EDTA to form complexes with heavy metal in wastewater which can help treat the water, connecting to my EE seen below.

Sophie Qian - M26 Biology IA_ Yeast Fuel Cell.pdf

Sophie Qian - M26 Chemistry EE_ Heavy Metal Inhibition.pdf

Chemistry Extended Essay: Heavy Metal Inhibition of Catalase

For my Extended Essay, I was drawn to studying biochemistry in an interdisciplinary approach. Specifically, I was eager to study how different metals affect the rate of reaction of hydrogen peroxide decomposition and how the structure of catalase is changed by the allosteric binding.

Heavy Metal Chelation with EDTA

For my Chemistry IA, I wanted to continue studying wastewater treatment. I started learning about chelation with EDTA being a prominent chemical chelator. I then decided to study the effect of pH on EDTA after learning about its polyprotic acid. It turned out that the relationship was more complicated than I had initially thought due to many polyprotic solutions and weak acids at play including the indicator, the buffer and EDTA itself. As such, I wasn't able to determine the coefficient of gormation as I intended but it is something I intend to continue researching.

Sophie Qian - M26 Chemistry IA EDTA Chelation.pdf

Sophie Qian - Math AA IA Bone Scaffolding.pdf

Math IA: Optimization of porosity and mechanical strength of 3D printed bone scaffolds using computational modelling (FR)

Modelling of Kelvin cells using GeoGebra and FreeCAD. Optimization of the ratio of porosity to mechanical strength using calculus and modelling to determine nodal overlaps when modelled with cylinders. Due to the limits of my HL Math Analysis and Approaches course I used FreeCAD to calculate my triple integrals. One day I hope to build on this investigation by researching 3D printed bioscaffolds in a wet lab setting and connect my future calculus learnings to what I was at the time unable to do.