Research fellow: Amanda McCabe
Hometown: Portsmouth, RI
Major: Biology; minor, Chemistry
School: Roger Williams University
Faculty mentor: Clifford Murphy
Project: Development of metalloporphyrin functionalized transmissive conducting electrodes for photo- and electrochemical detection of thiocyanate in marine environments
Amanda McCabe, heading into her senior year, knew that if she wanted to go to graduate school, she needed to gain research experience.
She applied to Rhode Island NSF EPSCoR’s Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) program and now is two weeks into a 10-week intensive research experience in the RWU lab of Clifford Murphy, assistant professor of chemistry.
In addition to the work in the lab, McCabe and her SURF peers will participate in program activities on the science and industry of biofuels, science communication and dealing with data, scientific poster design, and aquaculture and oyster restoration in the Ocean State.
At the end of the 10-week experience, the undergraduate fellows will present their findings at the 8th Annual RI SURF Conference held at the University of Rhode Island.
One recent day found McCabe wearing goggles and gloves, working at a piece of equipment, the VersaSTAT 4 by Princeton Applied Research, and using electrochemistry to apply a dye to a surface at a constant voltage as part of a procedure.
Looking up from her work, she explained cyanide fishing, the illegal practice commonly used in the aquarium industry to capture live fish.
“They spray cyanide and it stuns the fish, and make it easy to catch them,” McCabe said. “But, it also seeps into the coral and destroys the environment.”
Although the procedure is illegal, there is no way to determine the use of the chemical, so the SURF project seeks to create a detector.
McCabe said she was still unsure of her exact path, but wanted to do research: “I like working with my hands, and I’ve been learning a lot of new techniques. A lot of these skills are going to be really useful.”
Story and photo by Amy Dunkle
Rhode Island EPSCoR is funded by the National Science Foundation under EPSCoR Research Infrastructure Improvement Award #OIA-1655221 (Sept. 2017-Aug. 2022). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.