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Asked by SilentSwiftwave to Matthew, Andrew, Francesca, Laura, Rebecca on 7 Nov 2014. This question was also asked by supersonic, Zoe, Bethany, Tigx, Courtneyeaton, wiki.
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Matthew Camilleri answered on 7 Nov 2014:
Well, I would love to say that my research can save the work from climate change, but in truth it might not have such an effect worldwide.
What my research is focusing on is the change light energy into chemical energy by facilitating a number of reactions, which should be used for medicine preparation.
If my PhD is really successful then it is possible to use my research to find ways how to store sunlight into chemical energy which can then be used during the night, but that is really stretching the boundaries of what I want to achieve in the short term.
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Francesca Palombo answered on 8 Nov 2014:
My research contributes to meeting the Physics grand challenge in healthcare, so the benefit is towards developing new noninvasive methods which may improve clinical diagnosis and prognosis
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Laura Schofield answered on 8 Nov 2014:
Hi! Plastic is literally all around us, from clothes we wear (check the label for nylon and other man made materials), to the bottles of drink we buy and from the screen I’m reading your question on to the glasses that help me see it. At the moment it’s made from chemicals taken from crude oil, a non-renewable source that we are quickly running out of!
That’s where I come in, I am working on a way to make plastic from fruit peel! So I hope that my research will help to change the way we make plastic and make the plastic industry a whole lot more environmentally friendly and sustainable! -
Andrew McKinley answered on 10 Nov 2014:
My past research has potential in so many applications as it is broadly analytical chemistry; I built a device to measure the viscosity of tiny volumes of material – this could possibly be used for cellular sensing of disease; my work with DNA could open up a world of bioelectonics – using DNA as a molecular wire!
I also now do educational research, which will improve the teaching of chemistry to a wide range of people, and hopefully will inspire the next generation of chemists! This research will directly benefit the world by creating more chemists!
Comments
SilentSwiftwave commented on :
What does that mean?
Laura commented on :
Do you mean sustainable? It means we can carry on doing it forever.
Plastic at the moment is made from crude oil (the black gloopy stuff that comes from massive chambers underground, not the stuff we use for cooking) and we will run out of it in about 70 years. It takes many thousands of years to make oil (it happens when carbon is buried deep underground and the heat and pressure turns it into oil) so we can’t make it at the same rate we are using it up.
With the research I am doing, it uses citric acid which is taken from fruit peel so can be grown pretty quickly. If we can keep making the starting materials as quickly as we are using it up, it is more sustainable because we can keep it going forever!