UNC research opportunity gives chemistry major invaluable experience

Jake Watson saw firsthand the important link between chemistry and healthcare amid the COVID-19 pandemic while interning at a local pharmacy, which in turn changed the course of his career ambitions.

“At first, I thought being a pharmacist was the way to go,” said Watson, a senior chemistry major at Commonwealth University-Lock Haven. “It turns out, I was interested in the drug discovery process — where it involves using chemistry to make these medicines we use today.”

From there, Watson turned his academic focus to chemistry with plans of becoming a medicinal chemist with a focus on antibacterial and anticancer drug discovery.

“At Lock Haven, I’ve been very interested in organic chemistry and biochemistry since the drug discovery process heavily relies on these branches of chemistry,” said Watson, who further studied chemistry this past summer as one of the selected students for the Summer Undergraduate Research Opportunity in Chemistry (SUROC) at the University of North Carolina.

It was the perfect fit, he says. Being a Top 20 nationally ranked chemistry program — according to U.S. News and World Report — made UNC a big draw to Watson.

“What made me apply to the UNC program was not only working alongside a top-notch chemistry program but also getting a lot more exposure to hands-on laboratory work,” Watson said. “I got to visit some small startup companies in the Research Triangle, learn about scientific entrepreneurship, experience presenting my scientific research, and learn about research ethics.”

During the 10-week program, Watson spent a lot of time conducting research under faculty mentorship in one of UNC’s well-equipped research labs. Specifically, his research involved exploring the reaction in making cyclopropanes (a family of organic compounds with interesting and unique reactivity) using a dialkyl sulfone reagent his faculty mentor was working on.

“The reason why cyclopropanes are important is that they’re found in a number of drug molecules, natural products, agrochemicals, and insect repellents,” Watson said. “The group I worked with previously showed that making cyclopropanes with the sulfone works, but its mechanism is unknown.”

In addition, Watson participated in two research symposiums — one for all the different UNC research experience for undergraduates (REU) programs and a second just for the SUROC program.

“For the first symposium, I was selected as a finalist to present all my work for this summer,” Watson said of his first time presenting research at a poster session. “For the second symposium, I presented my work and have received a lot of feedback from my (professor principal investigator) and other chemistry students in the grad program.”

According to Watson, the biggest thing he learned from his summer experience is that research takes a lot of time and failure.

“You can't expect science to go your way all the time,” Watson said. “That's why science involves experimentation.”

“The biggest summer highlight was that I worked on some ground-breaking research that will lead to publication,” he added. “In fact, my (principal investigator) is currently in talks with my mentor on whether I should be included as a co-author.”

Landing the UNC opportunity and being prepared to succeed during the summer experience can be attributed to the support and guidance from Lock Haven's chemistry faculty, Watson said.

“All of my professors were great to work with, and they knew I had a lot of potential,” said Watson, who plans to pursue a doctorate degree in chemistry, potentially at Duke, N.C. State, Purdue or Illinois. “I did undergraduate research with Dr. (Kyle) Root last school year, which made me more confident that I should consider pursuing research in the future.”