Enhancing Thrombin Activity with Iron-Doped Partially Reduced Graphene Oxide
During the summer of 2025, I attended the Garcia Summer Scholars Program at Stony Brook University—an intensive research program that places high school students in active university labs. I wanted to tackle a real medical challenge: uncontrolled bleeding, which causes over 1.5 million deaths worldwide each year. My question was simple but urgent: could we design a material that accelerates blood clotting without invasive intervention? This project became my exploration into nanomaterials and their potential to save lives.
Samples of different concentrations of FeCl3 pRGO during the Reduction Process
This work was conducted under the mentorship of Rebecca Isseroff, Adam Hansen, and Professor Miriam Rafailovich. Moving forward, I'm excited about optimizing iron concentrations, testing additional metal dopants like zinc and copper, and evaluating the long-term biocompatibility and stability of these materials for real-world medical applications.
The “Groxides”: Julianne Mayetani, Diana Sun, Shawn Lim, Leon Zhou(Left to Right)
Read Our Abstract Here(10 Minutes)
Poster Presentation at the Materials Research Society Fall 2025 Meeting
Our team's research on iron-doped graphene oxide for enhanced blood clotting was accepted as a poster presentation at the Materials Research Society (MRS) Fall 2025 Conference, one of the premier international gatherings for materials science professionals and researchers. There, we presented to industry professionals and fellow student researchers over the course of two days, gaining valuable insights on the validity and future direction of our research.
