Translational Orthopaedic Research Laboratory
Part of the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at NC State University and UNC-Chapel Hill
As is annual tradition here in the Translational Orthopaedic Research Lab, we had our mini golf outing in which our sole goal is to beat Matt. This year, like last year, we succeeded! Paige handily beat Matt with a score of 43 to his 46. Sorry Matt, better luck next year!
In a new twist, we had some daring lab members who opted to brave The Claw! Thanks but no thanks.
Congratulations to Stephanie, who was recently profiled in the NC State College of Education News! She defended her dissertation in November, titled “Supporting Scientists’ Public Engagement: Insight from a Program to Promote Impact Identity”, and officially graduated last weekend. We’re so proud of her!
https://ced.ncsu.edu/news/2026/04/28/stephanie-teeter-26phd-i-saw-a-need-to-support-scientists/
We had two students present posters and one who has a talk at this year’s OUR spring research symposium. Everyone did an amazing job!
Felicity presented her histology research related to the effect of hormnes on ACL and meniscus morphology.
Paige presented her histology and biochemistry work related to the HKJC project.
Sam gave a talk on his work using cartilage to investigate exosome therapy.
Great job everyone!
Our group was recently awarded a 5-year, $3.2 million grant from the NIH / NIAMS (National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Disease) to build on our previous work studying pediatric anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) injury treatment. ACL injuries continue to be a significant problem in the US, affecting more than 250,000 people annually, and the fastest rising injury rates are in children and adolescents with significant growth still remaining. Reconstruction of a completely torn ACL (ACLR) is becoming increasingly popular to treat these injuries in children of all ages to restore knee stability and permit the return to sports while limiting secondary injuries to other structures. Despite our awareness that failure rates after ACLR for pediatric patients are higher than they are for adults, comparisons of long-term joint degeneration between different surgical techniques have not been done. The goal of this project is to determine how ACL reconstruction technique can influence long-term graft remodeling and joint degeneration in the pediatric knee joint. Such information will allow us to provide better guidance for pediatric patients dealing with complete or partial ACL injuries.
Collaborators on this project include Drs. Lauren Schnabel and Logan Opperman at NC State, along with Dr. Jeffrey Spang at UNC-Chapel Hill.
You can read a summary of the project here.
Preliminary data for this proposal was collected with support from the UNC Thurston Arthritis Research Center, UNC NC TraCS Institute, and the NC State Office of Research and Innovation
Valli’s poster was recognized during The Comparative Medicine Institute (CMI)’s Research, Education & Innovation Summit. Her work with Melika and Ramair (from Danny Freytes’ lab) titled “Developing an Acellular Therapeutic for Intra-Articular Healing Through the Combination of Matrix-Bound Vesicles and Mesenchymal Stem Cell-Derived Exosomes” was awarded third place in the Undergraduate Poster Award competition.
Congratulations to Osa, Rayan, and Valli who presented the projects that they’ve been working on in our lab this summer. Osa has been working with Melika, Rayan has been mentored by Margaret and by Sarah Kubik from Bill Polacheck’s lab at UNC, and Valli has been mentored by Melika and Ramair Colman from Danny Freytes’ lab.
We are proud of our lab’s two newly minted PhDs. Jacob and Ricky both defended their thesis in June 2025, and are leaving the lab the same month. Both of them have been such an integral part of the lab these last few years and we’re sad to see them go.
We had four of our lab’s undergrads present at the OUR (Office of Undergraduate Research) spring symposium. They presented posters related to the research that they’ve been doing in the lab the last two semesters.
Jacob was selected as one of seven BME students to present at the 2025 Graduate Student Research Symposium. His poster, titled ‘Impact of Sex Hormones on Size, Organization, and Mechanics of the Adolescent Porcine Anterior Cruciate Ligament and Potential Mechanisms Through Estrogen Receptors’ focused on his dissertation research. You can see the abstract here (click ‘Abstracts’ for 2025 then go to the top of page 70 in the pdf that opens)
Another year, and more great costumes! Our group did Inside Out characters.
From left to right:
Back row: Matt as Bing Bong, Steph as Sadness, Margaret as Disgust, and Jacob as Embarassment
Front Row: Ricky as Anxiety, Melika as Joy, and Rahul as the Subconscious Guard (Frank or Dave)
As usual, our BPC labmates delivered as well.
Minions, GFP (Green Fluorescent Protein) pigs, Magic School Bus, Scooby Doo, Brown Labs, Looney Toons, Rock-paper-scissors
The annual Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) conference was pretty nearby this year in Baltimore. Our department had a whopping 46 presenters this year, including two from TORL. Ricky had a poster and Margaret had a podium. Great job guys!
Looking back through our old posts, it became apparent that we never posted about the beginning of TORL’s annual mini golf tradition. Though there are now few still around who remember this far back, we do remember that Matt won (of course). Paul lost and was forced to eat some awful concoction that no one remembers at this point. We all blocked it from our memory.
And thus a TORL tradition was born!
Even the guy who made the suspicious treat was doubtful, but Paul was a good sport about it.
Thanks, but we’ll pass
TORL 1.0
In April (yes, we’re a bit behind) Sam presented her research looking at the mechanical properties of equine SDFT at the spring Undergraduate Research Symposium.
Then, at the summer UGRS, Osa and X presented the projects that they worked on over the summer with Melika and Margaret, respectively.
We’re so proud of all of you!
TORL was well-represented at this summer’s SB3C (Summer Biomechanics, Bioengineering, and Biotransport Conference). Jacob, Ricky, and Melika all had talks about their research, and Sam was selected as a finalist for her paper.
Plus, we saw several TORL alum – both Zack and Stephanie Cone were there (though we sadly did not get a picture with Stephanie).
The day that the world has been waiting for finally came. Matt finally lost at mini golf!!
It seemed like any other game that would end with Matt winning. Turns out, halfway through he was already behind, but because he was keeping the score he didn’t mention it. The rest of us went on playing as if it was a mini golf competition like any other.
But then the final scores were tallied, and Matt lost!
Matt lost to both Ricky AND Jacob! A monumental day for everyone in the lab (except Matt).
Our favorite place with snow cones closed at some point between 2019 and 2022, so there was no inventive (translation: disgusting) flavor combination for him to eat. But they did have a stockade, and Matt did wind up in the gallows.
Sure, we would have rather him have to eat something gross, but we’ll take what we can get.
