I presented the progress of the first 6 months of my part-time master’s degree in the postgraduate research conference in the Double Tree Hilton in February 2018. I was still gaining familiarity with the software, but had some 1D and 3D simulations of drug release to present.

Since I have a passion for science communication, I decided I wanted to do something a little different. My project will incorporate modeling of drug release from channeled tablets, so I figured out how to make a demonstration that showed how the number of channels affects rate of drug release. I bought some Berocca dissoluble vitamin tablets that are normally added to water, and drilled 3 holes in one, 6 in another, and kept one whole as a control. I then asked someone in the audience to time how long each one took to fully dissolve, and we graphed the data at time 0s where no drug had been released and the three time points where 100% of the drugs had been dissolved. I then pointed out that, since we only had 2 data points, we do not know the process in between. The goal of my project is to find this out using simulations and mathematical modeling. There was a question about the mass and therefore drug content differences between the whole and channeled tablets and how this will affect the drug release, which will be considered later in the project.

Overall, I very much enjoyed designing my own experiments and presenting my findings thus far, and hope this showed through in the talk. Thank you to everyone that came and the other speakers for a fun and educational day!