Professor Paul Mayer, Director of the uOttawa John L. Holmes Mass Spectrometry Facility, dedicates much of his time to educating younger generations about science. He participates in countless STEM education for youth activities, from teaching science in his children’s schools to hosting Beaver and Cub scouts in undergraduate labs at uOttawa. His goal is to “show youth that science is fun and beyond what they’re learning in the classroom”.
In 2020, Deborah Quail-Blier, a Program for Gifted Learners (PGL) teacher from St. Brother André Catholic Elementary School, reached out to Prof. Mayer regarding her students’ “Cubes in Space” project. “Cubes in space” is a global STEM program run by iEDU in collaboration with NASA for students ages 11-18. Their objective is to allow students to design and test experiments – small enough to fit in 4-cm cubes – by launching them in a sounding rocket and a super pressure balloon. The project chosen by Ms. Quail-Blier’s students aimed to study the effects of space flight on EpiPens, to determine whether they could still be used by astronauts who experience allergy symptoms in space.
Prof. Mayer unhesitatingly rose to the challenge of helping Ms. Quail-Blier and her students examine the contents of the EpiPen by sharing his expertise in gas chromatography-mass spectrometry, an analytical method to identify substances within a sample. Prof. Mayer went to their school multiple times to explain the analysis process and played a crucial role in drafting the hypothesis and the analytical procedure, as well as providing feedback on the research proposal. The experimental part of the project – sealing pure Epinephrin and the contents of an EpiPen in little glass tubes – was conducted by Prof. Mayer’s team. To keep the students engaged, the lab work was done during a Google Meet video call. However, it was the students who designed and implemented a way to safely package the glass tubes in the cubes.
The students hypothesized that cosmic radiation would change the molecular structure of epinephrin, making the EpiPen less efficient. Once the cubes returned from space, Prof. Mayer’s team analyzed the contents to verify the students’ hypothesis. The result was dramatic – the epinephrine in the EpiPen solution had degraded completely, while the pure epinephrine showed signs of oxidation to derivatives of benzoic acid. The PGL students are now busy creating this year’s experiment – how to protect EpiPen in space! When asked about future involvement in “Cubes in Space” projects, Prof. Mayer expressed, “I would do it again in a heartbeat. I like sharing science with young people because I want to show them the infinite possibilities awaiting them when they’re older and more experienced”.
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