Eileen Elliott: ‘Accidentally’ discovering a chemical engineering career
When she was about 13 years old, Eileen Elliott was in a car accident that changed her life. The knee surgery she had as a result of the accident helped to restore mobility, but left her in considerable pain.
Around the same time, her sister was looking at graduate schools for chemical engineering, and told Eileen about the incredible research that was being done in various programs.
One project in particular stood out:
“My sister explained that within the chemical engineering field there are professors with the ability to create live tissue, such as cartilage, which can be placed back into the human body," Eileen said.
"I thought about how badly my knee hurt and how the doctor said I might have knee pain for the rest of my life due to the cartilage that had to be removed.They showed me the extracted cartilage, and that was when I realized how powerful chemical engineering can be. To think that chemical engineers had the ability to remove that pain! I became dedicated to studying the natural sciences, and ultimately pursued chemical engineering at The Ohio State University,” Eileen explained.
This summer, Eileen, whose faculty mentor is Jessica Winter, joins six other Ohio State chemical engineering students who are pursuing research projects as part of The Ohio State University Undergraduate Summer Research Program: Nathaniel Kramer (mentor: Umit Ozkan), Nathaniel Olson (mentor: Nicholas Brunelli), John Osburn (mentor: Daniel Dotson), Ivan Pires (mentor: Andre Palmer), Mitch Raith (mentor: David Wood), and Bradley Schockman (mentor: Yiying Wu).
All students will be presenting their research at the annual Undergraduate Research Office Fall Forum on September 15 in the Buckeye Reading Room at Thompson Library from 11 am - 4 pm.
Safer, more cost-efficient MRI’s
Eileen’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program placement, funded by the National Institute for Standards and Technology, is at an NIST branch in Boulder, Colorado. The mission at NIST is "to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life."
Her project follows the NIST mission in that she is working to improve the quality of life through research on Ultra-Low Field MRIs. Ultra-Low Field MRIs operate at 100 µT, a much lower electromagnetic field than the 1.5 to 3 T fields current clinical MRI systems use. The lower electromagnetic field emissions of Ultra-Low Field MRIs would allow for a safer and more cost-efficient diagnostic tool. However, with the smaller magnetic field, the signal received is lower.
Eileen’s challenge: Instrument methods to increase the signal and contrast seen in the MRI images.
Her project: Create resonators to complete dynamic nuclear polarization experiments to increase the signal, and to then instrument magnetic nanoparticles in order to increase the contrast seen in the images.
“Obviously, this project is not one typically associated with chemical engineering,” Eileen said when describing her project. “However, that is why chemical engineering is a powerful major; it can span across many different fields of science. Chemical engineering does this by combining all the natural sciences, throws in engineering courses, and creates one incredible major.”
What’s next? Eileen, who has been part of biological-based research in the William G. Lowrie Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as a research assistant in Professor Jessica Winter's lab for the past three years, hopes to continue similar work by pursuing a Ph.D. in tissue engineering and regenerative research after graduation, with a goal of helping others suffering from joint problems and other issues.
