Anika Jena, a rising fourth-year chemical engineering major at UC Santa Barbara, has earned an opportunity to present her work on powerful supramolecular biomaterials and nucleic acid nanotechnology at next month’s American Chemical Society (ACS) Fall Meeting in Washington, D.C. Jena was one of only ten undergraduate, graduate, and postdoctoral chemists nationwide selected to receive an Eli Lilly Travel Award from the ACS Women Chemists Committee (WCC) and Eli Lilly and Company. Aimed at increasing the participation of high-performing young women in the chemical sciences with outstanding research results, the awards program pays for a recipient’s expenses to present the results of her research at a national meeting. Awardees will also have opportunities during the conference to network with ACS and WCC members and be honored during a special luncheon.
“As an undergraduate student, attending and presenting at my first national conference is an important step in my research career,” says Jena, adding that she was proud to be the sole awardee from the West Coast and one of only two undergraduate recipients. “This will give me the opportunity to learn and confer with emerging minds and established leaders in chemical science and engineering, and I will be able to build a network of academic mentors and collaborators as I prepare to pursue a doctorate in chemical engineering.”
A 2024 Congressional Goldwater Scholarship recipient, Jena has immersed herself in undergraduate research since her freshman year at UCSB, when she interned at a local molecular diagnostics startup company. She later joined the research group of chemical engineering assistant professor Sho Takatori, followed by the research she is now conducting in the lab of physics professor Deborah Fygenson.
During the ACS Meeting, Jena will present the work on DNA nanotechnology and biophysics that she has been doing in the Fygenson lab. Her poster, “Controlling DNA nanotube outgrowth for tunable molecular architectures,” will be featured in two sessions, the ACS Polymeric Materials Science and Engineering Undergraduate Poster Session and the WCC Eli Lilly Poster Session. The objective of her research project is to use nucleic acid building blocks to design a centrosome-like dynamical structure, in which DNA nanotubes emerge radially from a DNA nanostar condensate core. Centrosomes are cellular structures involved in the process of cell division in animal cells.
“The work has the potential to reveal insight into the evolution of the centrosome, and could serve as an experimental model to explicate and eliminate diseases that arise from centrosome dysfunction,” explains Jena, adding that such diseases include cancer, neurological disorders, blindness, deafness, and congenital heart disease. “This experience at the conference will allow me to vet and refine my research in order to maximize the efficacy of my project and its overall impact.”
Jena’s research also has significant implications in terms of developing biocompatible and bioactive materials and molecular sensors.
Her work will be featured as an ACS Featured Interactive Poster and will be displayed on large touch screens located throughout the convention center. The poster will also be published after the conference on the ACS Digital iPoster Feature Gallery.
