Rising senior Jesus Cleto, a participant in the William A. Brookshire Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering’s Stutts Program for Undergraduate Research, recently attended the 29th American Association for Crystal Growth (AACG) West Conference on Crystal Growth and Epitaxy to present his poster, A Multiscale Framework for Heme Crystallization Inhibition: From Single-Molecule Step-Capping to Parasite Suppression.
Cleto’s presentation won the meeting’s poster award, which afforded him an additional speaking slot later in the week.
“I had never given a poster talk before, so this was my first time doing an academic research type presentation, but my professor and PI — Dr. Vekilov — is always motivating me and telling me to believe in myself. It was very much a surprise [to win] because I do tend to speak quite fast when I’m nervous, and I did get some very tough questions from a few of the judges, but apparently I did a pretty good job with it. They were under the assumption that I was one of Dr. Vekilov’s graduate students, and were surprised that I was able to communicate my research that well as an undergraduate,” Cleto said.
He was joined at the conference in Fallen Leaf Lake, California by Frank Worley Professor Peter Vekilov as well as five Ph.D. students.
“The air was fresh, the water was clear, and the conference itself is very relaxed even with the professional talks and networking opportunities. You don’t have to be super formal; you can just approach people and talk with them without the restrictions some other conferences have,” he added. “We got to meet with people from industry, directors of national laboratories, professors and researchers from academia… it was amazing to get to sit down one-on-one and get to know these people and their stories, what they do and why they do it, and where their passion comes from.”
Cleto’s interest in pursuing a graduate degree is part of what helped to get him involved in his now award-winning research, which he took over from his graduate mentor upon the completion of their studies.
“When I first approached Dr. Vekilov about working in a research group, I let him know that I was interested in nano research and polymers. He offered me an opportunity in his research group to work on the malaria project. I didn’t think that I would enjoy this project, because I don’t really consider myself a biologist, and assumed this project would be heavily biobased. Now that I’ve done more work on it, I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, it’s a mix of chemistry, physics, biology, and so many other subjects to understand and replicate the biological crystallization that occurs within the malaria parasite.”
“Since the beginning I have planned on pursuing a PhD after I finish my undergraduate studies, similarly in chemical engineering. I just wanted to give special thanks to Stutts and the generous program they have set up here at UH for their continued support of my undergraduate research. I would also like to of course thank my amazing PI, Dr. Vekilov, for allowing me this opportunity and for continuously supporting me. Finally, I would like to thank all my friends in Dr. Vekilov’s research group for being so supportive, especially my graduate mentor Henry, now Dr. Lee, for mentoring me over the last year and being such an incredible person to get to know!”