05/01/06 · Ortiz group graduate student, Jennifer Vandiver, schedules final doctoral thesis defense May 8th 2:00-3:30pm, Room 56-154. Jennifer's thesis title is, "Nanoscale Influences on Bioactivity: Ultrastructure and Nanomechanics of Model Bioactive Hydroxyapatite (HA)-Based Biomaterials."

03/24/06 · Congratulations to Anna Bershteyn, DMSE Ortiz group graduate student who has been awarded three doctoral fellowships :
1) The Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans (3 years stipend, half tuition)
2) The Fannie and John Hertz Foundation Fellowship. These graduate fellowships are widely considered to be among the most prestigious offered anywhere and include 5 years tuition and stipend.
3) National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (3 years stipend, tuition).
Anna will be spending the Summer of 2006 working with our collaborators, the Gazit Skeletal Biotechnology Laboratory working on stem cell based genetically engineered bone at Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel.

03/19/06 · Congratulations to Jacqueline Greene, DMSE undergraduate student and Ortiz group UROP (undergraduate researcher) who has accepted a summer internship offer from Dr. Luc Fetler at the Institut Curie in Paris, France. The Curie Institute is a cancer research institute in France, and Dr. Fetler does research on the immune system and lymph nodes with two-photon microscopy.  

12/03/05 · Congratulations to Ortiz gourp Graduate students who won poster presentation prizes at the 2005 Fall MRS Society Meeting as follows :
· Poster Prize : Jennifer Vandiver, "Silicon addition to hydroxyapatite increases electrostatic, van der Waals, and adhesion interactions." Symposium K Engineered Biointerfaces.
· Poster Prize Nominee: Ben Bruet "Nanoscale Interaction Forces at the Organic/Mineral Interface in Nacre," Symposium L Structure and Mechanical Behavior of Biological Materials.
· Poster Prize Nominee: Lin Han, "Nanoscale Biomolecular Adhesion Between Opposing Aggrecan Macromolecules,"Symposium NN Scanning Probe Microscopy in Materials Research.
The Ortiz group gave 7 other poster and oral presentations.

12/01/05 · Graduate student Ben Bruet awarded 10K MIT-France Seed Fund for Collaborative Research entitled "The Nanoscale Constituents of Trochus niloticus Nacre: Direct Visualization, Crystallinity, and Relationship to Nanomechanical Properties," A collaboration between the Ortiz Nanomechanics Laboratory at MIT and the Centre e la Matière Condensée et es Nanosciences (CRMCN) at University of Marseille-Luminy and Professor Alain Baronnet. Read more information here.

10/20/05 · Christine Ortiz participates in the high school conference entitled Women in Science and Engineering (WISE). See photos here.

10/15/05 · Congratulations to Miao whose paper was accepted to the journal Soft Matter. The full citation is : "Synthesis, Preparation, and Conformation of Stimulus-Responsive End-Grafted Poly(methacrylic acid-g-ethylene glycol) Layers," Miao Ye, Dong Zhang, Lin Han, Jonathon Tejada, and Christine Ortiz. The PDF can be downloaded from here.

10/12/05 · Christine Ortiz will coedit a focus issue of the Journal of Materials Research on Mechanics of Biological and Biomimetic Materials at Small Length-Scales (August 2006) Submission Deadline: December 21, 2005 ! For more information click here.

10/10/05 · Photos of Materials Day 2005 Posters! here.

09/20/05 · Congratulations to Ben Bruet whose 1st paper was accepted to the Journal of Materials Research. The full citation is "Nanoscale morphology and indentation of individual nacre tablets from the gastropod mollusc Trochus niloticus," B.J.F. Bruet, H. Qi, R. Panas, K. Tai, L. Frick, M.C. Boyce, and C. Ortiz Download the PDF here. News Articles :
MIT Press Release
Christian Science Monitor
USA Today
PhysOrg.com
Nanotechnology Now
Sci-Tech Today
World Science
A story will appear in the upcoming Issue of Advanced Materials & Processes magazine, the monthly technical magazine of ASM International (Material Interest column).

08/20/05 · Laurel Ng defends doctoral thesis! Laurel has moved to San Diego and has taken a position at Titan Corporation.

08/15/05 · Christine Ortiz and Jen Vandiver give one-week Nanomechanics Short course at the Center for Advanced Interdisciplinary Research in Materials at the University of Santiago, Chile.

06/20/05 · 10 abstracts submitted to the Fall Meeting of the Materials Research Society (MRS).

06/12/05 · Christine Ortiz gives congratulations talks to this year's NSF-PECASE (National Science Founation-Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers) award winners at NSF in Arlington, VA.

06/22/05 · Graduate students Miao Ye and Lin Han give poster presentations at the Polymers East Gordon Research Conference. See photos here.

06/20/05 · Photos of farewell group potluck dinner for Delphine here.

06/01/05 · 8 undergraduate students begin working in the laboratory full time for the summer of 2005; Haile Negussie (Boston University, Biomedical Engineering Department), Alex Hu (Biotechnology Processing Engineering Center Summer Intern, Cornell University, Biological Engineering), Ellie Rahbar (Minority Summer Research Program, Michigan State University), Jane Yoon, Jonathon Tejada, Laura Daher, Sarah Ng, and Julian Villarreal (MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering).

04/01/05 · Congrats to Delphine Dean and Lin Han whose paper "Nanoscale Conformation and Compressibility of Cartilage Aggrecan using Micro-Contact Printing and Atomic Force Microscopy," was recently accepted to the journal Macromolecules. Download the PDF here.

Read Layman's description of image to the left.

03/20/05 · Nan Yang, DMSE UROP, was offered a position at the Institute for Materials Research and Engineering in Singapore and will be working with Dr. Su Xiaodi on a project titled "Combined SPR and QCM for Biomolecular Recognition" for three months this summer.

03/15/05 · Photos of Laurel Ng, Alan Grodzinsky, and Christine Ortiz at the MIT Biological Engineering Division Retreat in Portland, Maine. All of them are on the Photo Album page here. Laurel Ng gave a poster presentation and Christine Ortiz gave an oral presentation.

02/20/05 · See some photos of Ortiz group alumni Kristin and Reuben Domike in the UK on the photo album page. Kristin is doing a PhD at the University of Cambridge in Professor Athene Donald's research group on the mechanisms of protein aggregation and Reuben is working at GlaxoSmithKlein.

02/04/05 · Congrats to Ben Bruet who passed his oral doctoral qualifying exam!

01/20/05 · Congrats to Delphine Dean on her doctoral these defense and graduation!! The title of her thesis is :"Modeling and Measurement of Intermolecular Interaction Forces between Cartilage Extracellular Matrix Macromolecules." See all the photos here.