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!

Group Picture, Spring 2018

Better late then never... this one is one of my favorites!

Team Sydlik, Spring 2018

Left to Right: Brian Holt (Research Scientist), Karoline Eckhart (GS1, Chem), Caoxin Tang (senior, Chem), Avanti Pandit (sophomore, Chem), Wyatt Swift-Ramirez (junior BS/MS, Chem), Anne Arnold (GS4, Chem), Zoe Wright (GS4, Chem), Tianning Zhang (MS, BME), Stefanie Sydlik (Professor)

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!

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?