Georgia Gwinnett College chemistry professor, Dr. Romero-Reyes, visited Centennial Academy and presented to a 7th grade class on his journey as a scientist as part of Science ATL’s Science Lives Here! Program.

When Did You Know You Wanted to Be a Scientist?

For Dr. Misael Romero-Reyes, it wasn’t until high school. His science class was doing experiments with titrations, a colorful technique used to determine the concentration of an unknown solution. The color of the solution would change as the concentration of the solution changed. For the first time, he wanted to understand the chemistry behind his observations. He wanted to be a chemist.

On October 27, 2023, Dr. Romero-Reyes visited Centennial Academy as part of Science ATL’s Science Lives Here! program. The goal of the program is to promote hometown pride in Atlanta as a Science City and cultivate a sense of belonging in science for underrepresented students through pop up exhibits and school visits by STEM professionals.

Dr. Romero-Reyes met with a 7th grade classroom and gave the students a presentation about his journey in science. He was born in Tolúca, Mexico, but moved to Iowa City for three years when his father was on a sabbatical. He described being nervous when he first came to the United States, explaining how “English is different outside of the classroom.” It was at Iowa City West High School where he first discovered his passion for chemistry. He returned to Mexico to attend the Universidad Autónoma del Estado de México, where he received his bachelor’s degree, and then conducted research and obtained his doctoral degree at the University of Iowa and Emory University.

“It’s a lot!” Dr. Romero-Reyes admitted to the students, who were shocked to see so many different places pinned on the map in his presentation. He may not have discovered his passion until later in his youth, but he was determined to follow it once he did.

Now, Dr. Romero-Reyes is an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Georgia Gwinnett College. He spends half of his time teaching chemistry courses to undergraduate students. The other half of his time is spent doing research in the Romero-Reyes Laboratory, where he is the principal investigator. Currently, his research is focused on filtering harmful bacteria out of water with wood.

“Has anyone ever seen SpongeBob?” Dr. Romero-Reyes asked the class. Nearly every student’s hand shot up. “Me too. Have you ever watched him catch jellyfish?” He proceeded to use SpongeBob’s jellyfish net to describe his wood filtration system. The jellyfish net is too uniform and has too many large holes, so smaller filters are needed to compensate. Similarly, his lab work involves attaching small filters to the pores in wood in order to make it a viable bacteria filtration system.

Dr. Romero-Reyes provided plenty of time for questions and the students had more than enough. They asked him a range of questions from “what are some harmful bacteria in drinking water?” to “what’s your favorite thing you’ve seen under a microscope?” to “what was school in Mexico like?”. He shared photos of bacteria under a microscope, bacteria growing on a plate, and colorful reactions. “Chemistry is the most beautiful thing!” He told the class.

Over 90% of students at Centennial Academy identify as a person of color ^[1]. One of these students is London, a 7th grader who dreams of developing her own hair product line or becoming a pediatrician. These interests may seem extremely different from one another, but London isn’t worried. When asked about her biggest takeaway from Dr. Romero-Reyes’ presentation, she shared that “you can not know what you’re going to be [now] but you’ll develop it further on”. The opportunity to learn from Dr. Romero-Reyes’ diverse journey as a person of color in STEM was an invaluable experience for students like London.

As part of being involved in Science ATL’s Science Lives Here! program, Centennial Academy received a cash award of $500. They will use this to fund STEM initiatives at their school.

Throughout his presentation, Dr. Romero-Reyes continually emphasized the importance of keeping an open mind and being willing to try new things. For teenage Dr. Romero-Reyes, it meant being open to exploring the colorful chemistry behind titrations. For adult Dr. Romero-Reyes, it means taking additional classes to learn how to teach science courses to bilingual college students, which is something that he hopes to introduce to students at Georgia Gwinnett College soon.  “Even if you don’t know what you want to do now, that’s okay.” He advised. “Always keep yourself open to possibilities.”

Sources

1. Centennial Place Academy (Charter). U.S. News & World Report.

©The Godfrey Argent Studio

By Sarah Strassler

In order to develop new drugs and chemicals, we need to be able to design a molecule on paper and then bring it to life! This involves trying different recipes until the product is just right. However, unlike making a cake, the molecules can’t be seen or tasted. Scientists rely on creative methods to understand what is going on in their flasks and to detect the final product. The research of Sir John Cornforth was pivotal in helping us understand the three-dimensional arrangements, or stereochemistry, of atoms in a molecule which helps us predict how they’ll interact to make new ones. This allowed Cornforth to develop recipes for many important molecules, including cholesterol and penicillin!

Ostosclerosis left Cornforth fully deaf by the age of 16.

John Cornforth was born on September 17th, 1917 in Sydney, Australia. When Cornforth was 10 years old, he started to show the first signs of otosclerosis which is a condition where the bones in the middle ear become deformed. These bones eventually stop transmitting sound and the condition leads to deafness. As his hearing deteriorated, Cornforth became drawn to science and “the beauties of crystals and distilled liquids, the colours of dyes, and smells both good and bad.” This motivated him to develop his own home laboratory in his mother’s laundry room.

By the time Cornforth began college at the University of Sydney, he was completely deaf. Cornforth relied on primary literature to learn the material for his classes and even taught himself German to be able to understand a broader range of articles. He went on to earn his doctorate from Oxford University in 1941 where he was awarded one of only two scholarships. The other scholarship was awarded to Rita Harradance whom Cornforth later married, and who became his “ears” during scientific meetings.

Research on stereochemistry and enzyme synthesis earned Cornforth the Nobel Prize.

Cornforth had a knack for synthesizing difficult chemicals. As a graduate student, Cornforth became the first scientist to synthesize cholesterol, an important molecule needed to make hormones. When World War II broke out, Cornforth developed a method to make a vital precursor for the “miracle drug” penicillin.

Because Australian universities required that all scientists lecture, Cornforth remained in England. He worked as a staff member at the National Institute for Medical Research, and then later as a co-director of the Milstead Laboratory of Chemical Enzymology. Cornforth continued to pursue research which furthered our understanding of how chemicals interact and new synthesis techniques. This work earned him the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1975 alongside corecipient Vladimir Prelog. Cornforth was knighted in 1977 and he received countless other awards throughout his lifetime from organizations such as the Royal Society and the American Chemical Society.

Cornforth published articles to share knowledge in an accessible way.

Throughout his career, Cornforth published hundreds of articles to share his findings with the scientific community. His research paved the way for the development of modern cholesterol-lowering drugs and laid the foundation for synthesis of countless chemicals utilized today.

Longtime Atlanta local Lonnie Johnson is an engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. His education and experience enable him to engineer new products, some that have provided hours of fun for kids and others with the potential to transform the way people around the world generate power.

Born in 1949 in Mobile, Alabama, Johnson followed his curiosity from a young age. He has imagined and invented new gadgets and experiences from go-carts and robots to space vehicle systems and rechargeable batteries.  In an 2018 interview, Johnson explains his longtime fascination with how things work: “For me, it’s almost magical being able to come up with ideas and then have them materialize.” His first accolade came at a science fair in 1968 sponsored by the Junior Engineering Technical Society (JETS). Johnson was the only Black student in the competition and “Linex,” a compressed-air-powered robot made of junkyard scraps, won him first prize.

He later earned bachelors and masters degrees in engineering before joining the United States Air Force and later NASA. As he applied his curiosity to government projects, Johnson continued to pursue his own inventions. While exploring how to build an environmentally friendly heat pump, Johnson attached some nozzles to his bathroom sink and when he opened the nozzles a very powerful stream of water blasted into the bathtub When he opened the nozzles a powerful stream of water shot straight into the bathtub. That late night experimentation became the Super Soaker, the number one selling toy in 1991.

Since then, Johnson has created more than 100 inventions and is now dedicated to developing new energy technology as well as inspiring new generations of curious kids in Georgia and Alabama and across the United States. Read more about Lonnie Johnson

By Sarah Strassler

“Women should not have to do all of the adapting. It is time for society to move toward women, not women toward society” – Jocelyn Bell Burnell

When a star dies, it leaves behind a stellar “corpse” in the form of a dense core with a strong magnetic field – more than 10,000 times stronger than the magnets used at the junkyard to lift cars. As the core rotates, the magnetic field creates a beam of electromagnetic waves, like a cosmic lighthouse.

In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell became the first scientist to observe the radio signals from pulsars. These pulsars have been important tools that allow us to navigate space, test the laws of physics, and potentially communicate with extraterrestrial life! However, when the Nobel Prize was awarded in 1974 for the discovery of pulsars, Bell Burnell’s name was omitted from the recipients list largely due to her gender.

Early Life: Paving the Way for Female Astronomers

Jocelyn Bell Burnell was born in Northern Ireland in 1943, a time when only men were encouraged to be scientists. However, Bell Burnell’s parents were educated Quakers who encouraged her interest in science by taking her on trips to the nearby observatory. She taught herself astronomy at an early age using her father’s textbooks and fought the school system alongside her parents until they allowed her to attend lab instead of the homemaking classes girls were placed in. By the end of one semester, Bell Burnell ranked first in her class.

While earning her bachelor’s degree, she was the only female enrolled in honors physics and was constantly teased by her male classmates. After graduation, she continued her education at Cambridge University where she was one of two women in her graduate program. “Surely they’re going to realize I’m not bright enough,” she thought to herself. “But until they throw me out, I’m going to work my very hardest.”

While in graduate school, Bell Burnell worked under Dr. Andrew Hewish, an astronomer who needed a sharp student capable of building a telescope to help him scan the sky for the radio waves produced by quasars. It was using this newly built telescope that Bell Burnell discovered the first pulsar.

Discovering the First Pulsar Waves

On November 28th, 1967, Bell Burnell detected an “unclassifiable squiggle” while checking the telescope readouts by hand. However, Hewish dismissed it, insisting it was simply interference. Determined to solve the mystery, Bell Burnell remained focused on the squiggle, which pulsed in a remarkably regular pattern. Then she noticed a second pulse coming from a different region of the sky and knew that it was not something to be ignored. These incredibly regular pulses were coming from pulsars which now serve as comic “lighthouses”: important points of consistency in the ever-changing cosmos that help astronomers to navigate space.

The discovery of pulsars was published in Nature, science’s most esteemed journal, with Hewish’s name appearing first on the author list. During interviews, Hewish received all of the scientific questions while the questions for Bell Burnell focused on her body dimensions and dating life. In 1974, Hewish and another astronomer, Martin Ryle, received the Nobel Prize in physics with Hewish receiving credit for discovering pulsars.

However, Bell Burnell said she harbors no ill will toward the Nobel committee, focusing instead on the countless other awards she has received. She had an esteemed career in academia where she was named Commander and Dame of the Order of the British Empire. Bell Burnell also received the Oppenheimer prize in 1978 and the Heschel Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society in 1989. She has served as president for countless institutes and societies and has honorary degrees from universities too numerous to mention.

Supporting Women and Minorities in Science

In 2018, Bell Burnell received the Breakthrough Prize for her discovery of pulsars and was awarded £2.3 million. Instead of keeping the money, Bell Burnell donated the money to create scholarships for women, underrepresented minorities, and refugees who want to study physics.  Bell Burnell stated, “I reckon I discovered pulsars in large part because I was a minority person [at Cambridge]. And I have a strong suspicion that other minority people might have similar feelings and work equally hard and discover things.” 

“The ability to restore sight is the ultimate reward.” – Patricia Bath

By Sarah Strassler

The National Eye Institute reports that by the age of 75, almost half of all Americans have cataracts that affect their vision. As you get older, some of the proteins in your eye start to break down and cause the build-up of a cloudy blemish that we now know as a cataract. These blemishes develop slowly over time and make your vision blurry or dimmed. As you can imagine, the earlier surgeries to manually remove the physical obstruction required incredible precision and could lead to blindness if not done properly. 

A Revolutionary Invention

In 1981, Patricia Bath had the idea to develop a new device that would use a laser to remove cataracts, allowing for a less invasive procedure that was more precise and would significantly cut down the recovery time for patients. Her idea was more advanced than the technology at the time and took nearly five years of research and clinical trials to develop and patent. In 1988, Bath received her first patent for the Laserphaco probe. The probe can be inserted into a tiny 1-millimeter incision in the eye and then a laser is used to very quickly vaporize the cataract. The decomposed lens can then be easily extracted and a new one inserted. This technology has helped restore vision to people who have been blind for over 30 years!

The Laserphaco probe is approved by the FDA in the United States and has been used internationally in Canada, Japan, and several European countries. Bath retired from the UCLA Medical Center in 1993 and was the first woman to be appointed to the honorary medical staff.  

Developing A System for Community Ophthalmology

Patricia Bath was born in 1942 in Harlem to Gladys Bath and Rupert Bath, the first black motorman in the New York City Subway system. Bath’s interest in science began very early on when her mother, a housewife and domestic worker, bought her a chemistry set.  At the age of 16, people had already started  to recognize Patricia Bath’s scientific innovation with her findings from a cancer research workshop being incorporated in a scientific paper. Bath earned a Bachelor’s Degree from Hunter College in 1964 and went on to attend Medical School at Howard University .

While doing an internship at Harlem Howard University, Bath conducted a study that discovered that blindness among black patients was double that among white patients. She attributed the prevalence of blindness to a lack of access to ophthalmology care, or eye care, and therefore developed a new discipline known as community ophthalmology. Her goal was to develop a program that would offer vision tests and screen for eye conditions in underserved populations. Her outreach programs saved the sight of thousands of individuals and helped students succeed in school by identifying children in need of eyeglasses. 

Thanks to her efforts, Harlem Hospital’s eye clinic began performing ophthalmic surgeries. She continued to volunteer here as an assistant surgeon and expanded her efforts to support more global initiatives to provide primary eye care to all people through the American Institute for the Prevention of Blindness. 

Prevent Blindness Georgia is a local organization that provides free eye care services like the ones Patricia Bath advocated for! Visit their website for more information.

Discover more Untold Science Stories from Science ATL.