Milestones – Translational Orthopaedic Research Laboratory

Zack is Done!

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.

Danielle Defended!

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!

Graduation 2022

Last weekend was graduation, and TORL was proud to have four students graduating this year — two grad students and two undergrads.

Aasim will be starting at University of Texas at Austin in the fall. He’ll be pursuing a PhD in their Biomedical Engineering, initially doing rotations with Dr. Elizabeth Cosgriff-Hernandez and Dr. Stephanie Seidlits

Andre will be starting as a level 1 engineer with Spectrum Plastics.

Lewis will be beginning a post doc in a few weeks with Danny Freytes, who served as Lewis’s co-advisor for his PhD. He won’t be going far (in fact, the Freytes Lab is the next bench down from ours so really not far!) but we’ll still miss having him as part of our group.

Danielle is putting the final touches on her dissertation and will be defending later this summer. We’re of course very excited for her, but also glad to not be losing her quite yet!

Lewis is a Doctor!

Today Lewis passed his PhD defense. Lewis is co-advised by Matt and Danny Freytes. He did a great job explaining his recent work modeling cell-ECM interactions at the muscle-tendon junction. We’re all so proud of you Lewis!

Zack Passes his Oral Prelim

Very exciting news: Zack passed his Oral Prelim today and is now officially a doctoral candidate. Congratulations to Zack!

MATT GOT TENURE!!

Yes, the title is in all caps because we’re yelling from excitement!

Matt was granted tenure, and will be promoted to Associate Professor at the start of the next academic year. He tweeted a copy of the notification letter:

(click to enlarge)

Final Two Papers from Stephanie’s PhD Work Published

She wrote a great twitter thread explaining the research and its significance:

Excited to share the last two papers from my PhD dissertation with @mattbfish ! A brief two-for-one thread on our two most recent papers reporting on age-specific effects of ACL injury (1/7) pic.twitter.com/JhSs9JuVnz

— Stephanie Cone (@stephaniegcone) February 21, 2020

Goodbye to Dr. Paul

Today was Paul’s last day with us in the lab. He’s leaving us to join the FDA as a Biomedical Engineer. We’re excited for him to move on to bigger and better things, but also sad to see him go.

Good luck Paul!

Photo of BPC group at lunch for Paul’s last day

Stephanie Cone’s Last Day

We recently dedicated a lab meeting to celebrating Stephanie and Paul and their accomplishments. We’re so proud of the lab’s very first PhD students!

We started with a review of the 2+ year-long study that they’ve been conducting: A retrospective of Paul’s man-bun.

Matt presented them with gifts wrapped in their very first posters (or the earliest we could find):

Personalized jerseys! (Size youth extra small, for for display rather than wearing). Matt also had all of their lab mates sign a photo mat that went in the frame.

Announcing Dr. Paul

Congratulations to Dr. Paul Warren, who successfully defended his dissertation on Tuesday! He, along with Stephanie Cone, was instrumental in setting up the lab five years ago and was a key player in establishing our awesomeness.