Living in the country on your “bucket list”? Check. Conducting research on your favorite chemistry topic? Check.
Elizabeth Gruen, an Ohio Northern University biochemistry major, says her summer internship at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany is checking all her boxes.
Her experience is part of RISE Germany, a program funded by the German Federal Foreign Office. RISE offers undergraduate students from North American, British, and Irish universities the opportunity to participate in summer research at top German institutions.
Ever since taking her first German language class in middle school, Elizabeth has wanted to visit the country. She’s also been fascinated by chemistry since high school, when she realized it held the secrets to how organisms and the physical world function.
“As someone who has always loved the ‘why’ behind everything, being able to grow my understanding of those processes at the most basic level instantly had me hooked,” she says.
The German research project she is assisting with focuses on OPAHs (oxygenated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a class of widely distributed chemical pollutants) in soils using isotopic analysis. The topic directly aligns with her long-term goal: earning a Ph.D. and specializing in the detection and removal of manmade pollutants.
Traveling has been an added bonus of her time abroad.
She’s paraglided in Switzerland, spent a weekend in Paris, and explored towns throughout Germany. She’s discovered that everything from grocery shopping to laundry to getting around town is different in Germany.
Her experiences inside and outside the lab are teaching her how to problem solve and adapt.
“From learning how to change a reactor in the GC-IRMS to how to adjust instrument settings to better analyze our target compounds, I have gained a lot of practical lab and research troubleshooting experience which will help me throughout my education and research career,” she says.
