Researcher solves a nanoparticle mystery using an iPhone camera

This story should be told to a lot of people. This cannot get lost in the research maze.

People complain about lack of equipment.
Then they use their phones to take selfies and make silly reels.

But what do highly intelligent and creative people do?

Read this story to know.

Instead of capturing a memory with an iPhone camera, Carnegie Mellon University's Nivedita Shyamsundar used hers to make a scientific discovery. A senior in the Department of Chemistry, Shyamsundar studies tiny particles that could help medicines and vaccines travel more effectively through the human body and reach their targets. Her work may one day lead to better cancer treatments and stronger vaccines.
She worked with researchers to create new metal nanoparticles. But the researchers could capture only the final stages of nanoparticle formation.

The formation was happening way too fast to capture with typical lab technologies.
The researchers noticed that the solution changed colour as the nanoparticles formed. Shyamsundar recorded a reaction with her iPhone. By analyzing the video frame by frame, she tracked the timing of the colour changes and compared those observations with the lab's data.

Building on this insight, Shyamsundar created a program that allows researchers to monitor nanoparticle formation using cameras they have on hand. Using the program, they discovered how the nanoparticles formed.
She found out the formation mechanism wasn't the classical one of metal atoms coming together one by one. It was actually clusters of metal atoms coalescing.

This innovation was possible not only because Nivedita is outstandingly smart and a hard worker, but because she is unusually talented in engaging available tools to solve longstanding problems in creative, robust ways that make real impact.

Now, Shyamsundar is investigating how nanoparticles can be used to improve cancer treatments. Traditional chemotherapy attacks cancerous and healthy cells, often causing severe side effects. By designing nanoparticles that can better exploit the acidic tumour microenvironment for drug release, she hopes to improve the delivery of chemotherapy drugs to cancer cells while reducing damage to healthy tissue.

To do this, she uses the nanoparticle core as an anchor for molecules—known as a ligand shell—that can regulate what is released and when. The shell resembles a pom-pom, with strings that can both protect the drug and treat cancer depending on the environment they enter. By changing the chemistry of these anchored molecules, she can more precisely tune drug release.
She also investigated factors affecting the formation of lipid nanoparticles for vaccine delivery. She wants to combine her expertise from academia and industry to develop a broader understanding of nanoparticle drug delivery systems.
For her efforts, Shyamsundar earned the Lois Jean Durham Scholarship, which recognizes excellence in chemistry and biochemistry.

The shell hides the drug when the nanoparticle is in the chemical environment of healthy cells, but when it reaches the acidic environment near cancer cells, the particles spring into action.

Changing ligand shell behaviour has the potential to make a big impact on how the drug releases.

I am impressed! Need I add "very" too? 

Kaveen Tennakoon et al, Isolating Ligand Steric Effects on Metal Ion Reduction and Gold Nanoparticle Formation Pathways Using Au(I)–Phosphine Complexes, Langmuir (2026). DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.6c02684

Nivedita Shyamsundar created a program that allows researchers to monitor nanoparticle formation using readily available cameras. Credit: Carnegie Mellon University

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