My name is Jordan Mahoney and I was born and raised in Bellevue, WA and am a Washington State native. I am currently an undergraduate student at Washington State University and will graduate in in May of 2018 with a B.S. in Chemistry, with the hopes of pursuing a career in the Dental field. 

 

At WSU, I work in a position in the organic chemistry stockroom. This job entails being responsible for hazardous chemicals, preparation of the university’s organic chemistry laboratories, and training new employees how to safely dilute acids, measure chemicals, and properly store/manage the wastes.

 

In addition to my extracurricular work, I have participated in a biochemical research lab as an undergraduate area of study. In this research, I assisted colleagues with preparations for protein synthesis and collection. The goal was to genetically modify a more efficient PAL enzyme in sugar plants. PAL is an enzyme that is important in plant defense mechanisms. In layman's terms, we were working to deliberately make the stock of a sugar cane less dense by altering the way it's natural construction occurs. This would allow the sugar cane stock to reproduce faster, and break down more efficiently. 

This website was created for educational purposes about a complex and heavily funded experimental facility. I chose to showcase the Large Hadron Collider because I was not well acquainted with it myself. In the creation of this website I learned more about this project and was able to relay newly discovered knowledge in a way that is understandable to people with a non-scientific oriented background.