Jacob was recently recognized with a BME Graduate Student Service Award. We know he’s awesome, but it’s always nice when others realize it!
Jacob Thompson has contributed to service broadly at NC State. He serves as the Associate Member Board President of the Comparative Medicine Institute. In this role, he represents students at the CMI Executive Committee meetings. In 2022, he also organized the Catalyze Entrepreneurship Competition. This is an event designed to provide seed funding to enable commercialization of university research. He is also the Budget Coordinator within the Scientific Research & Education Network (SciREN), which links university labs to K-12 educators.
We had a great time visiting Ms. Byrd’s 7th grade class at Wake Young Men’s Leadership Academy for SciMatch. This is our first in-person SciMatch since 2019!!
We talked about how our group is working to improve treatment options for knee injuries.
Kelvin (the NC SciFest Mascot) enjoyed himself as well
We talk briefly about what we were like in 7th grade, what we do, and why we like our jobs
Margaret led of our activities involves using photo-sensitive paper (Sun paper) to get kids thinking about how different tissues would show up on an x-ray or an MRI
We also have some 3D ‘stacking’ puzzles that we made years ago to demonstrate how we can get a 3 dimensional model from 2 dimensional images.
Jacob led them through making a customized meniscus. They used a 3D printed meniscus mold to create alginate gel ‘implants’.
Ricky showed them how we can use a mechanical tester to characterize our menisci (but really the kids just wanted to turn the handle as fast as they could and break things. We don’t blame them!)
BME is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2024! As such, our annual retreat was an even bigger event that normal. TORL had four undergrads present their research during the poster session.
Rachel was even awarded a BME Retreat Poster award
Obviously we had to take group photos with the human-sized BME letters.
In the second photo, we were told to pose for a funny photo and apparently several of this took to mean we should hide behind the letters.
The annual Biomaterials Day retreat was recently held at NC State. We had several lab members attend, and Sam even won an award for her research looking at the relationship between macro and micro mechanical properties of the equine superficial digital flexor tendon (SDFT). She was awarded the Most Outstanding Undergraduate Presentation award!Â
Congratulations to Zack (Dr. Davis!), who defended his dissertation on August 1. He joined the lab as an undergrad back in January 2015, and now he’s left with his doctorate. He did an amazing job at his defense(surprising no one) and he will be very sorely missed in the lab. Outside of Matt and Steph, he is the last remaining member of TORL 1.0, and his support for his lab mates– including mentoring at least a half dozen undergrads– his leadership, and his positive attitude have played a huge role in making the lab what it is today. Â
Sam and Aakarsh recently each presented their work at the annual Abrams Scholars final presentations. We’re very proud of both of them and everything they’ve accomplished in the lab.
We once again participated in the NC Science Festival’s SciMatch event to virtually visit two middle school classrooms. We taught them about improving options for treatment following meniscus injury using a hypothetical NC State basketball player as an example. Check out some ‘action shots’ below.
Zack shows off a 3D printed meniscus
A student shows off their “3D printed” meniscus (made with WikiStix)
Margaret demonstrates how to make the gel meniscus using their molds
Showing how we use the Instron to test the strength of a material, in this case a rubber band.
Jacob and Ricky (and Clementine) recently volunteered to help with the Girls Engineering Change Program, which encourages girls in the community to pursue interests in STEM. They hosted about two dozen high school-aged girls to show off our robot (aka Clementine), tell them about what we do, and show them how much fun engineering is.
As in years past, we teamed up with one of the 4th grade teachers at Exploris Elementary School to help with their engineering design unit. We decided to kick off the partnership this year by showing the students some of the different tools that we use in the lab and how we use 3D printing in our research. We tried this once before but had it scheduled for mid-march of 2020, and we all know what happened then… We were glad that they finally made it out to visit the lab and we could show off some of our fun toys!
First we introduced ourselves and talked for a few minutes about what it means to be a biomedical engineering and how we use 3D printing. The fun spinning chairs in the classroom were definitely one of the highlights of the visit.
Then we went back to the lab and had four stations to rotate the kids through.
Ricky showed them how we can use a 3D scanner to digitize objects, such as Mario.
Zack and Margaret showed off one of our 3D printers
Steph and Melika challenged them to think in 3D using WikiStix and a 3D pen.
Matt showed them how we can use the Instron to test material properties of different types of tissue. This one is always a favorite because we get to break things!
Mario was kind enough to model some glasses made with the 3D pen
We’re all excited to be able to partner with Exploris once again and look forward to our future visits.
Looks like we forgot to share Labsgiving 4.0 (2020, aka Labsgiving: COVID Edition- Outdoors, with all items individually packaged and no serving utensils) and Labsgiving 5.0 (2021, back to normal!), but rest assured we have not forsaken our annual tradition. Recently, we celebrated Labsgiving 6.0 (aka 2022 Edition).
As in years past, we were warmly welcomed with some custom artwork.
The turkey looked (and tasted!) delicious
We had a special turkey-shaped butter decoration, which was promptly beheaded.
So many desserts! (But, let’s be honest, that’s the real reason we were there.)
Including cupcakes that were almost too pretty to eat (almost…)
We confess, Halloween kind of snuck up on us this year. But, rest assured, we still did a group costume and it was just as amazing as you have come to expect from us. We did The Good Place!
From left to right (click photos to enlarge):
Matt dressed up as Michael, the architect of the neighborhood. He was rocking a 3 piece suit with a matching bowtie and pocket square
Steph went as Best Person Eleanor complete with shrimp in her bra
Sam was ‘regular’ Eleanor with a flannel shirt and skinny jeans
Zack dressed up as Chidi and even brought his own Ethics book
Margaret made an excellent Janet, cactus and all!
Ricky nailed the Jason Mendoza look – tracksuit and gold chains. But he did not take advantage of the opportunity to bring jalapeno poppers
The in-character photo!
The whole BME-BPC Crew: TORL as The Good Place, Brown Lab as favorite condiment, Greenbaum lab went with black t-shirts printed with their own microscopy images, and Freytes Lab went as ghosts
Congratulations to Dr. Danielle Howe, TORL’s 4th graduate, who defended her dissertation last week. From here, she heads to Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory!
