This summer I’ve had the opportunity to work in Dr. Ríos-Velázquez’s laboratory in the biology department here at the University of Puerto Rico- Mayagüez. The soft mater I have been investigating this summer is a biomaterial called a biofilm.

This ten week REU program has been many kinds of wonderful. From the wonderfully kind people, to the wondrous food, to the many wonders we encountered on the island, I could not have asked for a better way to spend my summer. Just as exciting as the fact that I was in Puerto Rico was the fact that I was working on something completely new to me: materials research in the Mechanical Engineering Department. I am a Chemical and Biological Engineer, so when I found out that I was investigating the viscoelastic properties of composites highly loaded with carbon nanotubes, I was slightly fearful because I only understood at most two words in that project description.

This research creates, tests, and analyzes chitosan-talc composite films for the intended development ad usage in the food science industry. Food packaging alone accounts for 570 million pounds of plastic being thrown away in the United States each day¹. Due to its inability to degrade, much of this packaging ends up in landfills and our water supply. One solution to this crisis is replacing petroleum based plastics with biopolymers with applications in food packaging. However there are disadvantages to using pure biopolymers for this purpose. Many feasible options have low tensile strength and high hydro-permeability¹.

Greetings CienciaPR community,

My name is Eloise Yount, and I am proud to say that I have the opportunity of conducting research at the UPRM in the interim period between my third and fourth years as an undergraduate student at the Georgia Institute of Technology. I am pursuing a degree in chemical and biomolecular engineering, and with that degree I plan to lay the foundation for a career focused on sustainable technology/renewable energy development and implementation.