It's been a long pandemic...

 Life has been crazy busy dealing with the constant adaptations that the Covid-19 pandemic has thrown at a young pre-tenure lab! Despite this, Team Sydlik is thriving and lab life is slowly returning to normal. I will be working to update the website (with with back-dated entries!) over the next couple weeks. In the meantime, please enjoy these pictures from Sydlik Groupsgiving and the Team Sydlik Graham Cracker Gingerbread village, two of our favorite holiday traditions!

Sydlik Groupsgiving at Prof Sydlik's new house! Everyone tested negative, so we were free to unmask and share a meal :)

Team Sydlik graham cracker gingerbread houses. Why does every masked picture look so serious?

Welcoming new graduate students!

It's been a while since I updated, but Team Sydlik's been very busy! So far we've had a paper come out every month this year, starting with our exciting paper in PNAS in January. I swear I'll write more about our amazing research soon... but for now I'm here to announce that we're looking to hire new graduate students! Any CMU graduate students in chemistry, BME, or a related engineering should contact Stefanie (ssydlik-at-andrew.cmu.edu) or just come to one of our Monday morning group meetings to learn more. We have room for up to 3 new members!

Welcome Stephen!

Team Sydlik is excited to celebrate a new addition this week! Stephen Schmidt is a first year chemistry PhD student from Montana. (Like Prof Sydlik's PhD advisor, Tim Swager!) We are very excited to have him. Stephen will be working on new functionalization methods for degradable, cell instructive functional graphene materials.

We made a deal... they let me take their picture if I agreed to finally update the website 😂🙌

Prof Sydlik's Favorite Chocolate Cake (Another promise in return for the picture)

1.75c flour
0.5c cocoa powder
1c brown sugar
2t baking powder
1/4t baking soda
1/2T almond extract
1/2c pumpkin puree
1c almond milk (may need to add more or less depending on your flour. Cake batter should be thicker than normal cake though-- Kinda like a hybrid between cake & brownie batter)

Makes a 9" cake. Bake 30 minutes at 350F (or until a fork comes out clean).


Toping with a simple buttercream icing from powdered sugar, almond milk, vanilla, and earth balance butter is 👌

Group Picture, Fall 2018

Rain forced Team Sydlik inside for our biannual pictures, so we decided to make it fun with a tribute to Prof Biscuit and Big Bunny! Perhaps the students will let me wait for a sunny day next time ;)

They made me take the picture inside, I made them all have bunny ears. Seems fair!

Left to Right: Stefanie Sydlik (Professor), Stephen Schmidt (GS1, Chem), Anne Arnold (GS5, Chem), Zoe Wright (GS5, Chem), Karoline Eckhart (GS2, Chem), Brian Holt (Research Scientist), Wyatt Swift-Ramirez (senior BS/MS, Chem), Avanti Pandit (junior BS/MS, Chem), Francesca Starvaggi (junior, Chem), Sasha Kennedy (junior, Chem)

We also took a serious one.

But Prof Biscuit disapproves...

Functional Graphenic Materials as Scaffolds for Bone Regeneration

A new review from Team Sydlik came out in Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine! The invited paper entitled "Functional graphenic materials, graphene oxide, and graphene as scaffolds for bone regeneration" details the next generation of graphenic materials and their perspective application towards bone regeneration. Functional graphenic materials (FGMs) are chemically modified graphenes that include moieties to assist in regeneration by enhancing cell-biomaterial interactions. These materials offer tunable properties and could be the next generation of bone implant. Read more about it in the full paper.

Prof Sydlik wins Young Investigator Award

Prof Sydlik was honored with the American Chemical Society PMSE (Polymer Material Science and Engineering) Young Investigator Award! She gave a talk at the fall ACS meeting in Boston on the group's ongoing work in developing functional graphenic materials as scaffolds for stem cell instructed bone regeneration.

Take me out to the ball game!

This summer, instead of trying our luck finding an evening without thunderstorms to have a picnic, Team Sydlik took a night at the ball park. The Pirates won!