Welcome Karoline!

First year chemistry graduate student Karoline Eckhart has officially joined Team Sydlik! She has been working in the lab since July, but the department finally permitted her to officially call the lab her forever home. (Where a PhD is defined as forever ;) ) Karoline joins us from Cal Poly and will be working on macrocyclic ring opening polymerizations and peptide functionalized graphenes. We are excited to have her!

Therapeutic Methacrylates: Elegant in their Simplicity

Big news! Zoe's paper, "Covalently-controlled drug delivery via therapeutic methacrylic tissue adhesives" has been published in the Emerging Investigators issue of the Journal of Materials Chemistry Part B. Called "elegant in its simplicity" by one insightful reviewer (with whom I obviously agree), Zoe used a simple chemical transformation to turn superglue into a smart surgical adhesive. Zoe covalently attached over the counter pain relievers (Aspirin, Advil, and Benzocaine) to methacrylate groups and incorporated them into an approved cyanoacrylate surgical adhesive. The tether bond she used was designed to release the therapeutic at a pre-determined rate, based on the rate of the reaction with water in the environment, conveniently providing pain relief and sterile wound closure. You can read her full paper here! 

Group Picture, Fall 2017

Presenting Team Sydlik, Fall 2017 Edition! There was a puddle by our usual sign, so we had to improvise. It was nice out & we were wearing enough blue & green that we couldn't pass up a picture day.

Sydlik Group, Fall 2017

Left to Right: Caoxin Tang (senior, Chem), Jenny Gao (senior, Chem), Anne Arnold (GS4, Chem), Zoe Wright (GS4, Chem),  Stefanie Sydlik (Professor), Brian Holt (postdoc), Karoline Eckhart (GS1, Chem), Dan Siroky (GS3, Chem), Stephanie Kuang (junior, Chem) Missing: Alex Moy (senior, MSE), Wyatt Swift-Ramirez (junior, Chem)

How epic of us, right?

Congrats to Jenny!

Jenny won 3rd place in this summer's undergraduate Three Minute Thesis competition for her research on graphene as a potential scaffold for bone regeneration. Congrats!

Jenny presents to a packed house!

Summer Picnic

This weekend, Team Sydlik gathered at the nearby Schenley Park to enjoy a late 4th of July picnic. I was happy that friends, family, and significant others were able to attend too! It's important to have good support outside of lab to have a happy researcher in lab, so I am grateful for the "extended team" that the Sydlik group has too. Doubly exciting, we welcomed new graduate rotating graduate student Karoline on Sunday too!

Team Sydlik summer crew!

Summer crew with our important people

#grillselfie

Tots nerding out about medicine. #doclife

"Make sure you get the bike in the picture. It's important!"

Team Sydlik's first cover!

Congrats to Brian & Annie for having their recent paper featured on the cover of Polymer International!

So fancy!

Congrats to Zoe, Annie, and Will!

Last week was a big one for Team Sydlik!

First, congrats to Zoe and Annie for becoming the Sydlik Group's first ABD (all but doctorate) PhD candidates!

Not to be outdone, congrats to Will for becoming the first graduate of the Sydlik Group! Will graduated with his BS in Chemistry on Sunday and will head to Duke to pursue his PhD this fall.

Top: Karen Stump, me, and my advisor Rick McCullough at CMU's graduation in 2007
Bottom: Karen Stump, Will, and me at CMU's graduation in 2017... I just had to recreate it!

Bioinspired Polypeptide Graphene

Our latest paper was just published in Polymer International! Using a living polymerization technique, we successfully chemically modified graphite, or pencil lead, to give a new bioinspired graphene. We demonstrated good mechanical properties and an propensity for cell adhesion, suggesting the promise of this material as a scaffold for tissue regeneration. Good work, Annie and Brian! You can read the full paper here: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/pi.5375/full

Glowing cells growing happily on our magical bioinspired pencil lead

Group Picture, Spring 2017

It was time for a new group picture! Welcome springtime weather!

Sydlik Group, Spring 2017

Left to Right: Dan Siroky (GS2, Chem), Anne Arnold (GS3, Chem), Brian Holt (postdoc), Wyatt Swift-Ramirez (sophomore, Chem), Caoxin Tang (junior, Chem),  Gauav Begur (junior, BME/ MSE), Zoe Wright (GS3, Chem), Jenny Gao (junior, Chem), Will Koshut (senior, Chem), Val Senavsky (junior, Chem), Stefanie Sydlik (Professor)

#SydlikGroupSelfie in the elevator. They are very nice to humor me!

Group Picture, Spring 2017

Sydlik Group, Spring 2017

Left to Right: Dan Siroky (GS2, Chem), Anne Arnold (GS3, Chem), Brian Holt (postdoc), Wyatt Swift-Ramirez (sophomore, Chem), Caoxin Tang (junior, Chem),  Gauav Begur (junior, BME/ MSE), Zoe Wright (GS3, Chem), Jenny Gao (junior, Chem), Will Koshut (senior, Chem), Val Senavsky (junior, Chem), Stefanie Sydlik (Professor)

Crazy Spring Semester!

It has been a crazy spring semester here with Team Sydlik! Research has been successful (stay tuned for updates! A new paper coming soon), and our undergraduates especially have been hard at work. To highlight some of their accomplishments...

Will Koshut (senior) will attend Duke University to pursue his PhD in Materials Science starting this fall. Congrats, Will! We will see big things from him for sure.

Jenny Gao (junior) was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) to conduct her research full time this summer! She's working on peptide modified graphite and I'm excited to see what she discovers. Congrats, Jenny!

Wyatt Swift-Ramirez (sophomore) was awarded the NASA Summer Internship to fund his summer research on covalent of therapeutics from modified graphite. Congrats, Wyatt!

Undergraduate research at Carnegie Mellon was such a transformative experience for me that it inspired me to become a professor. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to mentor the next generation of undergraduate researchers. Unfortunately, most students can't afford to spend their summer doing research without financial support, and there are even fewer funded opportunities than there were a decade ago when I was a student. However, you can make a donation to fund undergraduate research at Carnegie Mellon through the Dean Eric Grotzinger Undergraduate Research Fund here.

Zoe Wright

Today you get to meet another member of the Sydlik group, 3rd year chemistry graduate student Zoe Wright!

Zoe is a third year grad student who makes biologically active acrylate monomers, to be used as tissue adhesives that encourage wound healing. Zoe also works with peptides, polythiophenes, and graphene to make biomaterials for rebuilding bone, heart, and cartilage tissue. Zoe went to undergrad at the University of Maryland, College Park where she got dual degrees in chemistry and studio art. At UMD, Zoe studied platinum catalyst/ ligand design and synthesis under the direction of Dr. Andrei Vedernikov. (And for her art thesis, Zoe used her chemistry background to “dissect” manufactured materials like inks and plastics, as a way of exploring ideas about entropy and molecular interactions.) Zoe really likes plants and seeing the sun, so when she’s not working on making things, she’s usually gardening or riding her bike.

Education
2014 -  Carnegie Mellon University
Ph.D. candidate (chemistry, biomaterials)
2010 - 2014  University of Maryland, College Park
BS, Chemistry (organometallic synthesis)
Research advisor: Prof. Andrei Vedernikov
BA, Studio Art (printmaking, sculpture)
Thesis advisor: Prof. Justin Strom

Teaching experience (Carnegie Mellon University)
Jan - May 2017  Modern Organic Chemistry II
Sept - Dec 2016  Modern Organic Chemistry I
Jan - May 2016  Laboratory I: Introduction to Chemical Analysis
Oct - Dec 2015  The Science and Mathematics of Art
Sept - Dec 2015  Bioorganic Chemistry: Peptides, Proteins, and Combinatorial Chemistry
Jan - May 2015  Laboratory I: Introduction to Chemical Analysis
Sept - Dec 2014  Atoms, Molecules, and Chemical Change

Awards
2016 - 2018  ARCS (Achievement Rewards for College Scientists) Scholar
2013 - 2014  Creative and Performing Arts Scholarship
2010 - 2014  Senatorial Scholarship from Senator James N. Robey
2010 - 2012 Dean’s Scholarship

New graduate lab class!

This semester Prof Sydlik has been hard at work with grad student TA Annie and undergraduate TA Will developing and running a new graduate level polymer lab class. During the semester, the students will learn about the chemical basis for the mechanical properties of polymers, as well as the laboratory skills necessary to carry out research in the area. The class is designed to combine hands on lab work with lectures and group projects to encourage interdisciplinary collaboration. Interest in the pilot version of this class was very high: 17 students are learning about the principles of polymer design and mechanical properties! The class recruited an exciting mix of undergraduates, masters, and PhD students from the departments of chemistry, material science, chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical engineering. So far the students have synthesized polymers using air-free Schlenk technique. We will keep you updated on our discoveries as the semester progresses!

Undergrads & grad students, chemists & engineers. What a great class!

Learning the joys of air-free synthesis and column chromatography. Always a party in the Sydlik lab, see the balloon?!