Creating Crystals, Treating Infection
Meet biology major Josie Bicknell.
Hometown: Washington, D.C.
Thesis advisers: Prof. Jay Mellies [biology] and Prof. Gonzalo Campillo-Alvarado [chemistry]
Thesis: “A Codrug for Resistant Coinfection: The First Clinically Relevant Antimicrobial-Antiviral Ionic Cocrystal”
What it’s about: Antimicrobial resistance is a global health concern that researchers across scientific disciplines are trying to address. The approach I took in my thesis is called pharmaceutical cocrystallization, a technique that creates new multicomponent crystals (cocrystals) between pharmaceuticals and other FDA-approved compounds. With this technique, I cocrystallized an antimicrobial with an antiviral and tested its antimicrobial properties.
What it’s really about: Can I make crystals that treat bacterial AND viral infections?
In high school: I was the nerdiest and shyest basketball point guard.
Influential classes: Prof. Nicole James’s [chemistry] intro chemistry course and Prof. Gonzalo Campillo-Alvarado’s organic chemistry course. I had the honor of being in the first classes both professors ever taught at Reed, and as someone who hopes to teach someday, I was inspired by how deeply they care about making science accessible.
Extracurriculars: I was the head of the Whitewater Club at Reed, where I got students in kayaks to learn some whitewater skills and be silly and splash around.
Cool stuff: I became a published researcher my senior year in the Campillo-Alvarado group, with publications in the Royal Society of Chemistry and my first-author publication on its way to the American Chemical Society Crystal Growth & Design journal (Bicknell et al. here we come!).
Challenges faced: I had a very limited science education coming to Reed and felt deeply I didn’t belong in my science courses, that I had somehow faked everyone out. Becoming a tutor and building community around teaching and learning allowed me to shake these feelings and help empower others and myself to believe we belong in STEM.
Help received along the way: Reed’s financial aid tipped the scales for my attendance and made it all possible.
More cool stuff: In winter 2022, the Frank H. Westheimer Student Research Fund for Chemistry gave me the opportunity to travel to Morocco and represent Reed at the Atlantic Basin Conference on Chemistry, where I presented my work on STEM education, mentored by Prof. Nicole James. I had always imagined becoming a scientist who got to travel the world, but to have this experience as a third-year undergraduate was mind-blowing.
What’s next: This summer, I will stay on at Reed as a post bac to turn my thesis into a journal article. After the summer is up, I’ll be working at Georgetown University as a research assistant studying what urate crystals can teach us about snake evolution.
Tags: Academics, Students, Thesis, What is a Reedie?