Katarzyna Odziomek (UG) in Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

I stayed at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, LBNL, (Berkeley, California, USA) for 10 months – between November 2013 and August 2014). I had the privilege of working under the supervision of Dr. Maciej Haranczyk at the Department of Computational Science, Computational Research Division (CRD).

Thanks to Dr. Haranczyk, I have started a cooperation with Daniela Ushizima from the CAMERA: Center for Applied Mathematics for Energy Research Applications, an expert in image analysis and data visualization. Our goal was is to quantify the risks posed by engineered nanoparticles, particularly hydroxyapatites.

In this project, we investigated computational tools based on computer vision algorithms, applied to SEM images to predict toxicity of nanoparticles based on their morphology among other structural/physical properties.  The main benefit on my stay at the LBNL was creating workflow environment to analyze images, extract statistical parameters and classify samples.

As a next step, a statistical model correlating both nano and microscale parameters with a biological response to those particles (e.g. toxicity) will be built. This model will be used to predict toxicity for new particles during their engineering process.

Durinfg my stay, I won the Chemical Information section (CINF) Scholarship for Scientific Excellence at the 2014 American Chemical Society National Meeting & Exposition held August 10-14 in San Francisco, where I presented a poster “Toward Quantitative Structure Activity Relationship (QSAR) Models for Nanoparticles.”