Team Sydlik Takes MARM!

When I was a student, I always wondered why professors' websites were out of date. When I became a new professor, I chose to use a Blog for my website so it was easy to update... and yet here we are! Only one update in the last 5 years 😳😂😅 At least you can see from Google Scholar that we've been doing some fun science and from @bunniesofochem (Instagram) that bunnies have a good time with Team Sydlik! (Forget about X... once it stopped being Twitter, it stopped being fun.) Anyways, the truth of this matter is that professors have too much to do and too little time and if we don't update our websites, everyone in our group still gets paid and our courses still get taught. None of our promotion or retention is based on how good our website is... so it slips to the bottom of the priority list. That's not to say that recruiting is not important! I'm chair of our admissions committee so prospective graduate students are a top priority to me. If you have any questions, just reach out and ask! (And if you don't get a response the first time... try again! I get at least 100 emails I have to respond to for essentials every day, so often some slip through the cracks.)

Anyways. I promised my students that if they got ice cream together and sent me a picture, I would in turn update the website. So here goes...

Last week (June 5-8) Team Sydlik visited Penn State University for the ACS Mid-Atlantic Regional Meeting. 5 team members presented including Dr. Juhi Singh (PD), Walker Vickery (PhD 5), Sebastian Guarjardo (PhD 2), Jacob Kadir (UG), and Dr. Annie Arnold (Lab Manager/ Group Leader/ Cat Herder). Enriching science was shared and learned. The real highlight of the trip though, was the trip for group ice cream at the Penn State Creamery!

L to R: Sebastian, Walker, Juhi, Annie, Jacob.
I don't see proof of ice cream, but I trust that it was so good that it disappeared immediately ;)

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.

Zoe wins Best Presentation Award at ACS!

Big news from New Orleans!! Zoe Wright won the "Best Presentation" Award at the Spring ACS National Meeting in New Orleans. For the first time, Prof Sydlik skipped the conference, sending 4th years Zoe and Annie and trusting that they would hold down the fort. This national level recognition for her presentation skills is a huge honor! Zoe shared her work on therapeutic methacrylate adhesives. You can read more about the science in her paper, or see more about the award in this announcement. Great work!

QOMSBOC 2016

This past weekend, the Sydlik Group took to the roads again (no car selfies this time, sorry!) to present at the QOMSBOC, that is the Quebec-Ontario Mini-Symposium for Organic and Bioorganic Chemistry, in Canada. The conference ran 11/11- 11/13 and was held at the University of Waterloo, where Stefanie's former Swager labmate Derek Schipper, is a professor. Annie, Dan, Caoxin, and Jenny all gave posters, and Zoe gave a talk entitled "Sutureless Would Closure and Covalent Controlled Local Drug Delivery: Therapeutic Methacrylate Adhesives". This was the first time we had undergraduate researchers present at a conference, and Zoe's first conference talk. I was very excited to send these students, and thrilled with how well they represented the Sydlik Group!

Sydlik Group, all cleaned up & looking great! Dan (GS2), Zoe (GS3), Annie (GS3), Jenny (junior), and Caoxin (junior)

Annie presented a very colorful poster on her biomimetic graphene!

Dan captivates audiences with his triptycene #blindedbyscience

Lots of good scientific discussion going on at the poster session. The real question is: did they have good coffee?!

World Biomaterials Conference

On Tuesday May 17, 2016 members of the Sydlik Group traveled to Montreal to present at the 2016 World Biomaterials Conference! Annie and Brian gave excellent talks and Prof Sydlik and Zoe gave posters. We had a great time and heard a lot of inspiring science.

Sydlik Group with the Biomaterials Moose. We certainly clean up well!

Brian, Zoe, and Annie were coerced to pile into Prof Sydlik's Subaru to make the 10 hour drive to Montreal. To pass the time, we listened to the audiobook of Jurassic Park. Nothing like being trapped with your advisor in a confined space!

Prof. Sydlik presents a poster on our osteomimetic graphene scaffolds for bone regeneration

Moose calls to signify the start of symposia were a highlight of the conference!

Montreal is very pretty

ACS Colloids Symposium

This week the Sydlik Group is attending our first conference! The ACS Colloids and Surface Science Symposium is being hosted at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, so we didn't have to travel far. ;) Annie and Zoe will be presenting a poster and Prof Sydlik will be giving a talk on the biocompatibility of our osteomimetic graphene materials for bone regeneration.

Our first "official" Sydlik Group picture! June 2015 (left to right: Prof. Sydlik, Zoe Wright, Anne Arnold)