Chemistry student first from McMaster to win postgrad prize

[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/rambarran.jpg” caption=”Talena Rambarran has become the first McMaster student to receive the Andre Hamer Postgraduate Prize. The $10,000 award is given to the most outstanding candidates in the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council postgraduate scholarship competition. Photo by Peter Self.”]Talena Rambarran wasn't your typical little girl growing up in Hamilton.

While other kids were spinning yo-yos or playing with Barbies, she was building things
using colourful wooden balls and dowels from her molecular modelling kit. The kit was
courtesy her dad, Ronald, who graduated with a chemistry degree from McMaster in
1975.

That early introduction to science is yielding some positive results for this chemistry
graduate student.

Today Rambarran became the first McMaster student to receive the Andre Hamer
Postgraduate Prize. The $10,000 award is given to the most outstanding candidates in
the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council postgraduate scholarship
competition.

“I love to make things,” said Rambarran. “Here, I make things from scratch and then
change their properties, and I love that.”

“Here” is Michael Brook's chemistry lab, where Rambarran works with silicone
elastomers – materials found in everyday personal care products, electrical insulators
and bio materials, like contact lenses and surgical implants. But silicone elastomers are
water-repellent and tend to stick to other water-repellent particles, such as proteins
found in the body – not good for the body or the product.

Modifying silicones is no easy task. First, high temperatures or metal catalysts are
needed to make the materials, resulting in trace amounts of metal in finished products,
which is not always desirable. This is followed by high-energy or time-consuming
multi-step processes to modify products.

Rambarran is interested in finding new, environmentally-friendly, metal-free methods
to create and modify silicone elastomers, potentially improving outcomes for patients
and the environment. She hopes that developing a new method based on Click
chemistry – a process using simple chemical reactions like those seen in nature, that
don't use metal catalysts or produce by-products – will make these silicones easier and
safer to use.

The Andre Hamer Postgraduate Prize will give Rambarran more flexibility in her
research. She hopes to build her network of potential collaborators by attending
relevant conferences and taking part in an exchange with France's INSA de Lyon, a
university specializing in science and technology. There, Rambarran will have an
opportunity to collaborate with scientists doing similar research.

The Andre Hamer Postgraduate Prizes were established in 2004.