A Passion for Research and a Quest for a Ph.D. Began with a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship at the Tagliatela College of Engineering

Research work in synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry takes a certain kind of stamina, focus, and attention to detail, says Pier Cirillo, Ph.D., assistant professor of chemistry, and Nicole Langlois ’18, has all of that.

"You have to be prepared to spend a very long time in the lab,” Dr. Cirillo says. "You need to be able to multi-task, and you work at perfecting techniques by doing them repeatedly, in order to get the proficiency that also leads to efficiency. You get used to failing often. It can also be very lonely work, so it is very important that you are really interested in it and love doing it.”

And yet, Dr. Cirillo points out, "it can also be very satisfying, especially at the end of a day when you know you have synthesized a new composition of organic matter and it is pure. It is very much a blue-collar kind of science, but it has the potential to be useful at curing disease or alleviating symptoms.”

Langlois—who graduated last May with a double major in forensic science and chemistry—is pursuing her Ph.D. in chemistry at Northeastern University working in a lab developing "novel nano-scale probes for precise biological measurements,” probes that could be used to image "specific chemical processes occurring deep in the body in the nervous, circulatory, and immune systems in real-time so the information can be used to aid medical diagnostics.”

It’s work she says she cares deeply about, an interest that took root in the summer of 2016 when she received a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) that blossomed into her honor’s thesis project. Langlois worked with Dr. Cirillo developing a synthesis for Cadiolide B, a compound naturally produced by a variety of marine organisms, a compound demonstrated to have antibiotic properties toward Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus or MRSA, a serious disease-causing strain of bacteria. They were also able to "modify the structure to create non-natural versions of cadiolides that will hopefully result in an increase in antibiotic activity against resistant bacteria and less toxicity towards mammalian cells.”

"With research, there is an opportunity to apply that knowledge to solving a real-world problem,” Langlois says. "When I started to conduct independent research, I realized how exciting it can be to investigate a topic experimentally, which is one of the main reasons why I decided to pursue my Ph.D.”

Dr. Cirillo says Langlois "is very gifted academically. She is able to pick up and retain new information very quickly. She also has very good focus and good technique in lab which is why she is so successful in this kind of experimental work.”

In 2018, Langlois was awarded an American Chemical Society (ACS) 2017 Undergraduate Student Research Award, receiving a scholarship and an invitation to present her work at the ACS New Haven Student Research Symposium at Quinnipiac University last April. "I knew that the award was a distinguishing factor that set me apart from other students on my application for graduate schools,” she says. "Being invited to talk about my research alongside Yale graduate students and seeing the success of my peers in the poster session, made me feel proud to represent the University of New Haven and highlight the strength of our independent research experiences.”