Vikrim Bala ’20
“Over the summer, I worked at the Fairleigh Dickinson University School of Pharmacy under Dr. Hyunah Cho. Dr. Cho wanted to create an analgesic that can be implanted into the body after a surgery in the form of a thin sheet. This capsule would have three layers, two layers composed of a polymer (poloxamer) dissolved in acetone, and then a middle layer consisting of hydrogel. However, the hard part was not making this capsule, but rather it was 3D printing it. My work included optimizing a 3D printer (Hyrel System 30M) that normally uses materials such as ABS and PLA to use hydrogels and a polymer solution as printing materials. In addition, we ran countless trials in order to figure out which concentrations of materials, method of preparing solutions and CAD design (g-code edited) would yield the best results.”
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