Author: Thao Nguyen

Dr. Michelle Chen

Congratulations to Dr. Michelle Chen for her successful dissertation defense, “Mechanochemistry of Collagen Network Remodeling in the Sclera“. Abstract: The primary load-bearing tissue of the eye is the sclera, the eye’s white outer shell. It helps the eye maintain its shape by resisting intraocular pressure and protects the delicate intraocular structures. The sclera is able [...]

Happy New Year

We celebrated the end of 2018 and beginning of 2019 with our annual get together. There was a Battle Ship and Mario Kart face-off between PhD students and postdoc and a 9 year old. Guess who won most of the time. There were also lots of food and a dessert bake off. Vicky Nguyen won [...]

Dr. Jingkai Guo

Congratulations to Dr. Jingkai Guo for his successful dissertation defense, “Modeling the Mechanical Behavior of Soft Active Materials“.  Abstract below. Soft active materials are capable of converting chemical or physical energy into mechanical work in response to various environmental stimuli such as pH, solvent, salt, heat, humidity, electric or magnetic field, and light. These materials [...]

Congratulations to Tracy

Tracy Ling wins first place in Masters Level Paper (Poster) Competition at the World Congress in Biomechanics in Dublin, Ireland.  Here is a picture of her winning poster in the lab. This has been a good year for Tracy. She also won a travel award to give a podium presentation at ARVO in Honolulu, Hawaii [...]

Dr. Dan Midgett

Congratulations to Dr. Dan Midgett  for his successful dissertation defense, “Measuring the Full-Field Inflation Response of the Optic Nerve Head“.  Abstract below. The optic nerve head (ONH) is the region where the retinal ganglion cell (RGC) axons travel through the eye wall and bundle to form the the optic nerve. The lamina cribrosa (LC) and [...]

Lab Mug Design

We held a contest to design our lab mug. It was inspiring to see all of your creative design. Tracy Ling’s design won a close vote. But since there were so many great ideas, I combined a few of the top vote getters to come up with the final mug design. “Who, what, where, why, [...]

Lab Holiday Party

Celebrating another year and saying farewell to 3 lab members.  Zheng Jia left to start a faculty position in Zhejiang University, China.  Ran Shi will be returning to Beijing Institute of Technology after 1 year as visiting student, and Hai Dong will be moving to UIUC to start another postdoc. Thank you for all your hard [...]