Jeff
Wilson
University of Texas at Austin
Department of Chemical Engineering - C0400
Austin, TX 78712
PHONE: jwilson@cm.utexas.edu
Background
I’m originally
from Tucson, Arizona where I stayed to attended
college at the University of Arizona (Go Cats!).
During my degree program I worked under Dr. S. Scott
Saavedra working on Electro-Active Integrated Optical
Waveguides (EA-IOW) and Surface Plasmon Resonance
Spectroscopy (SPR). I finished my undergraduate
degree in May 2003 with a BS in Chemistry. After
graduating I came here to the University of Texas
at Austin in Fall 03 joining the PhD Chemistry program.
Research Summary
I am working under Dr
Jennifer Brodbelt in the chemistry department with
Dr Nicholas Peppas as my co-advisor, from a mass
spectrometry angle to characterize hydrogel systems
for drug delivery. My research focuses on the development
of methodology and application of ESI-QIT-Mass Spectrometry
to characterize binding properties of novel hydrogel
systems created in the Peppas group. Our instrument
uses Electrospray Ionization (ESI) which provides
a soft ionization source allowing even non-covalently
bound macromolecules and macromolecular assemblies
to be studied successfully, which are important
in hydrogel systems. Our instrument is also equipped
with a quadrupole ion trap (QIT) which allows for
trapping of ions before detection which provides
many advantages, mainly controlled fragmentation
of parent ions by collisionally activated dissociation
(CAD) allowing for MSn type measurements to be conducted.
ESI-QIT-MS can provide important information beyond
molecular weight distributions such as binding characteristics,
target molecule uptake, drug release and binding
specificity in competitive binding processes which
can be used to better understand as well as improve
current hydrogel drug delivery systems.
