Glake Hill has received two honors experienced by college undergraduate or graduate students more often than by high school seniors. During an internship in Jackson State University’s chemistry department, Glake participated in research under Professor Paresh Ray. His work led to a scientific journal co-authorship and a conference presentation.
In November, Glake presented research at the 27th International Conference on Current Trends in Computational Chemistry and won third place in the college undergraduate category. There was no high school category available. His topic and poster presentation were titled, “Magnesium and Nitrogen Co-Doped Carbon Dots as a Fluorescent Probe for Selective Detection of Cobalt Ion.” Besides the thrill of competing with college students from across the country, Glake’s third-place win included a cash prize, a book award from the scientific publisher, Springer (https://www.springer.com/gp), and a certificate of achievement.
Glake said learning more about chemistry and presentation skills prompted him to go to JSU for the internship, which awarded college credit. He was one of four high school students from different places included in the internship program. Each studied separate topics. Glake said his responsibility was “to research ways to create clean water for places that don’t have any by finding a specific particle that could break down harmful pollutants.” The journal article included Glake’s findings.
The peer-reviewed journal article, “Development of Human Host Defense Antimicrobial Peptide-Conjugated Biochar Nanocomposites for Combating Broad-Spectrum Superbugs,” was published October 30, 2020, in the American Chemical Society Applied Biomaterials journal. (https://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsabm.0c00880). The article is timely because it deals with infectious diseases, multidrug-resistant superbugs, and the design of broad-spectrum anti superbug biomaterials.
Glake said that the most valuable parts of the internship were presenting the project before scientists and getting third place in the process. The audience included noted people in the scientific community, including book authors. “Being a published co-author feels like a pretty big accomplishment and gives me the chance to apply for certain jobs due to my experiences,” he said.
