DATE: June 2015
University of Manitoba | Inorganic Chemistry
David Herbert, Assistant Professor

An important facet to our research program is undergraduate participation. We try to include undergraduates in our work in a variety of ways, and give them meaningful research experiences. Although my group is relatively new (we turn two this year!), we have already had a bunch of talented undergraduates pass through, some of whom have used their time with us as a springboard to further scientific endeavors such as graduate school.

While including undergrads can be remarkably fruitful, it does also come with increased equipment and consumables costs. Programs such as the Hamilton Grants are great opportunities to help us provide meaningful research opportunities to a new generation of students, so… thanks!

The syringes we will receive from this product grant will enormously benefit both graduate and undergraduate students in my lab. We routinely host undergraduates in a range of roles, from for credit project students, to summer interns to volunteers looking for research experience. All would use these syringes to carry out experiments on manageable, small scales, and the ability to dispense small, microliter quantities of reagents would serve to educate students on the need for accuracy and precision when dispensing reagents. Students would also be able to carry out ‘in situ’ experiments, for example, on an NMR scale, allowing them to learn about the benefits of monitoring reactions as they occur.

We routinely carry out syntheses and test reactivities of our compounds on small scales. As such, our chemistry requires routine accurate dispensing of small volumes of liquid reagents. Hamilton micro syringes are great for this application.

In addition, we design inorganic and organic compounds that can act as electro catalysts for the reduction/oxidation of small molecules such as water, protons and carbon dioxide. The products of these reactions are sometimes gaseous (e.g., hydrogen gas, carbon monoxide) and we would use gastight Hamilton micro syringes to sample the gaseous headspace from electro catalytic experiments for gas chromatographic (GC) analysis.

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