Katrina Heyrana (C'08)
As an undergraduate student in Dr. Jennifer Swift's lab, Katrina Heyrana researches the use of surfaces for crystal growth. A Chemistry major and a Music minor, Heyrana has twice published her labwork for the pharmacology department of the Georgetown University Medical Center.
A distinctive feature of the crystals that Heyrana’s work focuses on is that the same compound can take on a variety of shapes and molecular arrangements when it grows into a crystal, depending on the surrounding molecules or the surface that it grows on or adheres to. This is knows as crystal polymorphism.
“Polymorphs can have vastly different physical properties, varying in such aspects as melting point, color, and bioavailability. The last characteristic is especially important to the pharmaceutical industry because it is possible that one polymorph of a compound can work as a drug while a different polymorph of the same compound can be completely ineffective or even have deleterious effects,” explains Heyrana.
Read more about Heyrana's work in Georgetown College Research News.
