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 👌

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!

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!

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!

Team Sydlik's first cover!

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

So fancy!

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.

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?!

Sydlik Lab Space

Last Friday was the last day of classes here at CMU! The Sydlik Group had a lot to celebrate, with the end of the semester and the end of renovations in our lab space. We held an open house to show off our new spaces and share the holiday spirit with our colleagues. Check out the space in the pictures below!

Prof Sydlik's office. Now you see why the website is these colors!

Through that door...

...lies the student office!

Main synthetic lab space

With chemical fume hoods for miles!

Even more chemical fume hoods 

Safety first!

Biosafety lab

Super cool microscope. So much automation!

Lunch room follows the color scheme!

Congrats to Will!

Congratulations to senior undergrad Will Koshut on his acceptance to the Chemistry PhD program at the University of Tennessee! Will's going to be Dr. Koshut some day! Thrilled to have helped nurture Will's passion for research during his time in the Sydlik Group.

Sydlik Groupsgiving

This Sunday, in preparation for Thanksgiving, the Sydlik group gathered at Prof Sydlik's house to celebrate our first annual Sydlik Groupsgiving. We had a great time celebrating all we were thankful for: interesting science, good labmates, and great food!

#SydlikGroupSelfie

Biscuit was pretty upset that he didn't get his own plate.

Hello World

Welcome to the Sydlik Group's new home on the internet! As a millennial, I've decided that it makes more sense to keep a group blog than a more traditional group website. Research moves quickly, especially in an assistant professor's group and it's easier to keep you up to date through social media. We'll be adding posts with more details about research projects and team members in the coming weeks and months. For now though, you can follow @StefSydlik on Twitter or @ProfBiscuitSydlik on Instagram to get up to the minute updates as we bring our website up to speed. Thanks for stopping by!

Welcome Zoe & Annie!

First year chemistry graduate students Zoe Wright and Anne Arnold become the first members of the Sydlik group. Their research will focus on the development of an osteomimetic graphene composite for bone regeneration.