{"id":13442,"date":"2015-10-06T11:43:16","date_gmt":"2015-10-06T15:43:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.cos.ucf.edu\/?p=13442"},"modified":"2015-10-06T11:43:16","modified_gmt":"2015-10-06T15:43:16","slug":"national-award-for-substance-abuse-identification-test","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/national-award-for-substance-abuse-identification-test\/","title":{"rendered":"National Award for Substance Abuse Identification Test"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: left\"><a href=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2015\/10\/Nash_hr.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-13498 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2015\/10\/Nash_hr.jpg\" alt=\"Nash_hr\" width=\"201\" height=\"247\" \/><\/a>Congratulations to\u00a05th year Ph.D. chemistry\u00a0student David Nash, on receiving the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nij.gov\/funding\/fellowships\/graduate-research-fellowship\/pages\/welcome.aspx\">National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Graduate Research Fellowship<\/a>.\u00a0The NIJ is the research-funding branch of the Department of Justice. Annually, they provide a handful of graduate students a monetary award to conduct research in the social or physical science fields that will help the criminal justice, law enforcement, or forensic communities. David Nash is the first UCF student to receive such an award. He has his B.S. and M.S. in chemistry from UCF and currently works\u00a0in the in the research lab of \u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/blair.research.cos.ucf.edu\/Bio.html\">Richard Blair, Ph.D<\/a>., a research professor in the physics department and the <a href=\"http:\/\/cater.cecs.ucf.edu\/\">Center for Advanced Turbomachinery and Energy Research <\/a>(CATER).<\/p>\n<p>David received this award for his research project titled \u201cLow-cost Handheld Spectrometer and Cloud-Based Data Analysis for Improved Identification of Substances of Abuse\u201d. This project involved developing a new field drug testing method for law enforcement and forensic analysts. The current chemical spot tests methods, Nash states &#8220;are not as accurate and simple to use as TV makes them out to be.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>His research will develop a handheld spectrometer that contains an ultraviolet light source, which will be used with a chemical indicator test strip that causes drugs to fluoresce a certain color. The\u00a0spectrum of that color will be captured by a\u00a0smartphone camera using an app that David and his team will develop as well. This app will be synced to a cloud database of standards for known substances, and a match will be sent back to the phone giving the result for the identification of the unknown. This new method will make it quicker, easier and safer\u00a0to analyze the substance, giving a more accurate result compared to the current methods used in the field by law enforcement.<\/p>\n<p>David has been\u00a0working on this project for 5 years, beginning in his last\u00a0year as an undergraduate at UCF. &#8220;We\u2019ve made a lot of progress and it\u2019s great to see that people are interested in the research that we are doing to help the law enforcement and forensic communities.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Working in an academic research lab,\u00a0David has been\u00a0responsible for mentoring\u00a0many\u00a0undergraduate students that are interested in research, 17 total since he started graduate school. David would like to give credit to the undergrads\u00a0because without them helping on this project throughout the years, he would not have much to show for it. David would also like to thank\u00a0his advisor,\u00a0Dr. Blair, for giving\u00a0him the opportunity to work on this project in\u00a0his earlier days as a chemist, &#8220;which allowed me to find interest in it enough to continue the project throughout grad school. If it wasn\u2019t for him and his brilliant ideas, this project would not be possible.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>David would like to\u00a0inform\u00a0students that &#8220;I put in a lot of work to get to where I am today\u2026 so for anyone who\u00a0thinks that they don\u2019t belong in college, a certain tough degree program, or those that doubt their own intelligence because they don\u2019t have a 4.0 GPA, hard work really does pay off and it\u2019s really the effort you put in that will determine whether you belong or not.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Congratulations to\u00a05th year Ph.D. chemistry\u00a0student David Nash, on receiving the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Graduate Research Fellowship.\u00a0The NIJ is the research-funding branch of the Department of Justice. Annually, they provide a handful of graduate students a monetary award to conduct research in the social or physical science fields that will help the criminal justice, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":125,"featured_media":13498,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3,35,38,40,13,14,29],"tags":[376,629,736,875,2421,2856,2871,3457,3497,3516,3592,3723],"class_list":["post-13442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-awards","category-chemistry-departments","category-breaking-news","category-graduate-student-news","category-news","category-physics-departments","category-ucf-news","tag-awards-2","tag-chemistry","tag-college-of-sciences","tag-david-nash","tag-national-institute-of-justice-graduate-research-fellowship","tag-research","tag-richard-blair","tag-ucf","tag-ucf-chemistry","tag-ucf-college-of-sciences","tag-ucf-news-2","tag-university-of-central-florida"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>National Award for Substance Abuse Identification Test - College of Sciences News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sciences.ucf.edu\/news\/national-award-for-substance-abuse-identification-test\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"National Award for Substance Abuse Identification Test - College of Sciences News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Congratulations to\u00a05th year Ph.D. chemistry\u00a0student David Nash, on receiving the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) Graduate Research Fellowship.\u00a0The NIJ is the research-funding branch of the Department of Justice. 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