11/07/06 · Ortiz group will give five presentations at the 2007 Annual Orthopaedic Research Society Meeting, February 11 - 14, 2007 in San Diego. For a full list of the presentation titles, dates, and locations click here.

11/06/06 · Christine Ortiz gives a talk on "Nanomechanics of Mineralized Tissues" in the Nanoscience and Nanotechnology symposium at the Annual 2006 SACNAS (The Society for Advancement of Chicanos and Native Americans in Science) Meeting in Tampa, Florida.

11/3/06 · Ortiz UROP Julián Villarreal wins 2nd place in student technical presentation contest at the 2006 Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers Northeast Regional Conference in Philadephia, PA. The title of his presentation was "Nanomechanical Mapping in Nacre."

11/02/06 · Lin Han's paper Lateral Nanomechanics of Cartilage Aggrecan Macromolecules has been accepted to Biophysical Journal. PDF here.

10/20/06 · Kuangshin Tai's Nano Letters paper on the "Nanogranular origins of the strength of bone" is featured in Nature Nanotechnology Research Highlights. Link here.

10/13/06 · Congratulations to Kuangshin Tai who was chosen a 2006 MRS Fall Meeting Graduate Student Award Finalist! The Special Talk Sessions for the Gold and Silver Awards will be held on Tuesday, November 28, beginning at 12:15 p.m. The awards will be presented during the Award Ceremony on Wednesday evening, November 29, at 6:00 p.m. All finalists will receive either a Gold or Silver Award.

09/13/06 · Ortiz group graduate student Kuangshin Tai's paper "Nanogranular origins of the strength of bone" accepted to Nano Letters. Read PDF here. This paper is a collaboration with Professor Franz Ulm in MIT's Department of Civil Engineering.

09/01/06 · The Ortiz group will be giving 12 presentations at the Fall 2006 Materials Research Society Meeting (9 oral and 3 poster). For a full list of the presentation titles, dates, and locations click here.

07/31/06 · Christine Ortiz gives talk on nanomechanics of cartilage to Minority Summer Research Program students spending the summer at MIT (more photos here).

07/11/06·· Ortiz group student, Jacqueline Greene , is interning at the Institut Curie in Paris as part of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) program. Jacqueline (center, pictured in front of the statues of Marie and Paul Curie) is working with Dr. Alex Boissonas (left) and Dr. Luc Fetler (right) of the Curie Institut. Her work this summer involves studying how lymphocytes kill tumor cells and is mentioned in this MIT news article (link here).

05/24/06· Ortiz group graduate student, Cathal Kearney's paper, Nanoscale Anisotropic Plastic Deformation in Single Crystal Aragonite, was accepted by Physical Review Letters for publication. Read about it here (link here).

05/09/06 Ortiz group graduate student, Benjamin Bruet, was interviewed by National Geographic's Pulse of the Planet program, on his work with sea shells. The interview is scheduled for broadcast in July, 2006. More programs are scheduled to run in August. Listen to the mp3 of the interview here: Sea Shell Armor. Also, here are two press links related to Ben's work:
1) Science News, March 25, 2006; Vol. 169, No. 12
2) Mass High Tech: The Journal of New England Technology January 30th 2006

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."

04/07/06 · Read about newly accepted work on the nanomechanical properties of individual cartilage cells (chondrocytes) and their tissue engineered growth factor-stimulated pericellular matrix, by former graduate student Laurel Ng, et al. in press Journal of Biomechanics (Link here). Laurel Ng is currently working for L3 Communications Titan Group in San Diego, CA.

04/01/06 · Christine Ortiz gives a presentation at a symposium in honor of Christopher K. Ober, Francis Norwood Bard Professor of Materials Engineering at Cornell University (her doctoral thesis advisor) who won the 2006 American Chemical Society (ACS) Award in Applied Polymer Science sponsored by the Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering (PMSE). The award honors him for "his extraordinary ability to craft unique polymer architectures having practical applications in solving timely and important environmental, microelectronic and biological problems."

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.  

01/12/06 · Graduate student Ben Bruet is featured on the Discovery Channel program "The Daily Planet" which aired January 9th 2006. The piece was entitled : "Might of the snail shell shield." The piece is archived here : http://www.exn.ca/dailyplanet/view.asp?date=1/9/2006
A direct link is here : http://www.exn.ca/news/video/exn2006/01/09/exn20060109-shell.asx
If Microsoft Windows Media Player does not work properly you may need this : http://www.divx.com/divx/play/download/

01/10/06 · Read about the group's new collaborative work with The Gazit Skeletal Biotechnology Laboratory (http://gazitlab.huji.ac.il/) at Hebrew University (Jerusalem, Israel) on the nanomechanics of bone generated in vivo from genetically engineered mesenchymal stem cells,"Structural and nanoindentation studies of stem cell-based tissue engineered bone," by Gadi Pelled and Kuangshin Tai, et al. in press in the Journal of Biomechanics.