The Szczesny Group

Congrats to the now Dr. Ben Peterson! The first Szczesny Lab student to successfully defend his thesis. We are all very proud of you and will miss you a lot!

Congrats to Alexander Bolanos-Campos, our summer REU student, on presenting his research at the Penn State REU Symposium earlier this month. Alexander’s research focused on finding histological benchmarks for scaffold free tendon constructs.

Congratulations to Ben and Lauren for placing among the top 5 trainee presentation and posters in the 2022 ORS Tendon Section Conference: Guiding the Future! Ben’s presentation “Muscle Immobilization Prevents Functional Development of Embryonic Tendons but Does Not Affect Collagen Crosslinking” won the ORS Tendon Section Presentation Trainee Award. Lauren’s  poster “Rabbit Anterior Cruciate Ligaments Exhibit Sex-Specific Response to Mechanical Loading” won the ORS Tendon Section Poster Trainee Award. Well deserved! We are all very proud of you both.

         

We are very excited to announce that Dr. Szczesny has received an NSF CAREER award to study how fatigue damage leads to tendon degeneration! Furthermore, this work will help develop teaching methods to improve the recruitment and retention of women in engineering. We are very appreciative of having the opportunity to pursue both the research and educational objectives of this project.

We are so excited to share that Dr. Szczesny has received the 2022 BMES Cellular and Molecular Bioengineering (CMBE) Rising Star Award. Congrats Spence! It is well deserved and we are all very proud of you.