By Sharon Wu
Stefanie A. Sydlik, a Carnegie Mellon alumnus, spoke last Tuesday as part of a seminar series hosted by the biomedical engineering department at Carnegie Mellon University. In front of a packed audience in a classroom in Doherty Hall, Sydlik discussed her extensive research in polymer science, materials chemistry, biomaterials, and electronic materials. During her presentation, she also introduced a biomaterial that may hold the key to creating new orthopedic materials, implants and devices that could help advance the field of orthopedics.
Sydlik was an undergraduate chemistry major at Carnegie Mellon, where she participated in research on electronic polymers that would lay the foundation of her career. She later went on to study novel triptycene and nanocarbon-based materials at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she worked towards a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in Professor Timothy Swager’s laboratory.
After earning her PhD, she spent two more years at MIT completing her postdoctoral fellowship in chemical engineering. Under the supervision of professor of chemical engineering Robert Langer, she developed a novel biomimetic block copolymer, which is a synthetic material that can be used for cartilage repair through the imitation of biochemical processes.
After spending nearly a decade at MIT, Sydlik was recently appointed as an assistant professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Department of Chemistry. Her past research prompted her to start working in a laboratory group that focuses on synthesizing novel polymers and materials. During her seminar, Sydlik focused on the many properties of graphene and carbon nanotubules.
Made of carbon, graphene is composed of sheets of benzene rings, which are molecular structures shaped like hexagons. Carbon nanotubules are rolled up, cylindrical sheets of graphene. Sydlik had an interest in these graphenic materials, as they could serve as biomaterials with the ability to repair damaged bone or tissue.
