• Question: Why is your research important? What are the possible real world applications?

    Asked by anon-242665 to Zahra, Peter, Mairi, Elliott, Danica, Ane, Áine on 9 Mar 2020.
    • Photo: Danica Pinto

      Danica Pinto answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      Hi Chad,
      My PhD project involved building a portable set-up to detect acetone molecules. The set-up used a ultra-violet (UV) light emitting diode (LED) as the light source for my experiments. The principle behind this experiment is that acetone absorbs light of certain energy(/wavelength) which happens to be in the UV range. And by measuring the amount of UV light that is absorbed we can determine the amount of acetone present in the sample.
      Why acetone? Because it is one of the pollutants in the atmosphere although found in trace amounts can undergo reactions in the atmosphere due to interactions with UV light (coming from the sun). This can produce more harmful pollutants in the atmosphere that affect human health, visibility and the chemistry of the atmosphere. Acetone is also found in human breath and it can be used as a marker molecule to track the health condition of an individual. Particularly in the case of people on keto diet or to detect diabetic ketoacidosis which is a life-threatening condition that can be experienced by Type 1 Diabetic patients who breath out higher levels of acetone in comparison to a healthy person.
      The portable set-up designed in my project has real world applications to detect trace gases in the atmosphere and human breath. It will be easier to move the portable instrument from one room to another in a hospital or from one place to another in a car for measurements in the atmosphere.

    • Photo: Mairi

      Mairi answered on 9 Mar 2020:

      Hi Chad,
      My research is important because we are developing new medicines for serious diseases. We hope that one day our medicines will be available to treat unwell people worldwide!

    • Photo: Zahra Rattray

      Zahra Rattray answered on 9 Mar 2020: last edited 9 Mar 2020 3:40 pm

      My research is important because it attempts to answer questions about what makes cancer so aggressive and how can we develop new treatments that target weaknesses in cancer cells. The real world application in the long term is developing new drug treatments and diagnostics to predict how cancers will respond to drugs.

    • Photo: Ane Valera

      Ane Valera answered on 10 Mar 2020:

      What I am trying to do is to change the way a material is done in industry as producing it is very toxic. With my research, this procedure will be more eco-friendly and this material will still be used for car windscreens for example,as it has been used for a lot of years now.

    • Photo: Elliott Reedy

      Elliott Reedy answered on 11 Mar 2020:

      Our research will hopefully inform astronomers on what information to look for in their observations. Following this we can look to discover molecules that exist in space which can increase our understanding of astrochemistry. Applications for the real world could be discovering new reaction pathways or interesting molecular behaviour – this could inspire innovations in other fields of chemistry.

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