Achievement

Adam Shelly states that IGERT has been critical to his work thus far. His work on Quantum Dots on cell surfaces has been fully interdisciplinary from the start: the investigation of relevant biological systems with a novel tool that requires a firm grounding in the physics of the situation to properly understand and analyze. Without IGERT backing and encouragement, it would not have been possible to work with biology faculty to the extent I have as a physics student, or to have recieved the necessary background work with cell cultures and fluorescent microscopy, which makes this Quantum Dot project possible at all. Instead of a standard physics grant which could have, at best, left me investigating Quantum Dot behavior with no potential applications, I am now working full-time on a project that may greatly change our understanding of T-cell behavior, through applying what I am learning about the physics of Quantum Dots.