February 2024

•  Hirotaka has been given the United Japanese Researchers Around the World best paper award for his paper, Iijima et al, Nat Comm, 2023!! This award is designed to “recognize excellent research work by researchers in and from Japan.”
•  Kai just received the NOA for his R21 grant that will develop a piezoelectric scaffold for the treatment of VML, scoring in the 1st percentile!

November 2023

• Congratulations to Hirotaka, whose paper, “Network-based systematic dissection of exercise-induced inhibition of myosteatosis in older individuals,” was just accepted in the Journal of Physiology!
• Another of Hirotaka’s papers, “Network-based cytokine inference implicates Oncostatin M as a driver for an inflammation phenotype in knee osteoarthritis,” was accepted for publication in Aging Cell!

October 2023

• Welcome back Hirotaka! We are so excited to have you back in Boston!
• A BIG congratulations to Gabby who won the Mininder S Kocher Award for Most Promising Career from the Pediatric Research in Sports Medicine Society!!

September 2023

• Kai’s paper, “Nanotopographical Cues Tune the Therapeutic Potential of Extracellular Vesicles for the Treatment of Aged Skeletal Muscle Injuries,” was published in ACS Nano!

August 2023

• The Ambrosio lab held its first annual retreat on August 16! We are already looking forward to next year!
• Gabby and Meghan’s paper, “Mapping the landscape of magnetic field effects on neural regeneration and repair: a combined systematic review, mathematical model, and meta-analysis,” was published in the Journal of Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine!
• Zach and Gabby’s paper, “Female aging: when translational models don’t translate,” was accepted to Nature Aging!

July 2023

• Congratulations to Kai, who was awarded his first PI grant from AstraReal!

June 2023

• Michael leaves the lab to head to medical school in Vermont! Congrats, Michael, looking forward to seeing your journey!
• Juliana Bergmann joins the lab again as a technician after graduating from the University of Pittsburgh. Welcome back to the lab, Juliana! Excited to have you back!

May 2023

• Rylee Kopchak leaves the lab to head to Mayo Clinic for her PhD! Good luck and congrats, Rylee!
• Congrats to Bean et al. on their publication “Neuromuscular electrical stimulation enhances the ability of serum extracellular vesicles to regenerate aged skeletal muscle after injury” published in Experimental Gerontology!

April 2023

• Congrats to Zach, who was just awarded a fellowship award in the Spaulding Research Institute Leadership Catalyst program!!
• Congrats to Gabby, who won “Basic Science- Best Presentation” at the 2023 Medical Student Orthopedic Society!

March 2023

• Zach was awarded the 2023 Research Recognition Award at the American Physiology Summit!
• Cheers to Ekaterina, Rylee, and Nafiseh who led the lab through a gold star lab inspection!
• Zach won the award for best poster at the Aging and Cancer Symposium!

January 2023

• Hannah Houston and Michael Hermanto join the lab as post-bacs!
• Nafiseh Shahshahan joins the lab as a technician. Welcome, Nafiseh!
• Congrats to Wang et al. on their publication “Bioengineered 3D Skeletal Muscle Model Reveals Complement 4b as a Cell-Autonomous Mechanism of Impaired Regeneration with Aging” in Advanced Materials!
• Congrats to Gilmer et al. on their publication “Uncovering the “riddle of femininity” in osteoarthritis: a systematic review and meta-analysis of menopausal animal models and mathematical modeling of estrogen treatment” in Osteoarthritis and Cartilage!

December 2022

• Welcome, Ekaterina Creed, as our new lab manager!
• Congrats to Chowdhary et al. on their publication “Aging Affects the Efficacy of Platelet-Rich Plasma Treatment for Osteoarthritis” in the American Journal of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation!

November 2022

• Congrats to Iijima et al. on their publication “Age-related matrix stiffening epigenetically regulates α-Klotho expression and compromises chondrocyte integrity” in Nature Communications!

October 2022

• Congrats to Zach and Gabby for winning best poster at the AR3T Regenerative Rehabilitation Symposium!

September 2022

• Ambrosio lab moves to Spaulding Rehab Hospital/Harvard Medical School!

August 2022

• Congratulations to Sruthi for defending her dissertation!

June 2022

• Welcoming Rylee Kopchak as a new lab technician! Excited for you to be a part of a wonderful scientific journey.

May 2022

• Join us in congratulating Sunita Shinde on her new position at Novasenta.
• Congrats, Angelica and Amanda, for leaving the lab to start medical school! We wish you luck in your journey!
• Join us in congratulating our lab alumni, Dr. Hirotaka Iijima on his new Assistant Professor position at Nagoya University, Japan.

April 2022

• Welcoming Adam Jasper as our newest lab member! Excited for AJ to begin his scientific learning journey with us.
• Juliana has been selected as a winner of the Health Sciences Research Fellowship here at Pitt! Congratulations, Juliana! Very well deserved and we are all very excited to have you full-time in the lab this summer :)
• Zach Hettinger received a travel award to attend the 2022 Geroscience Symposium in Oklahoma!! The award was given in recognition of his outstanding abstract. Way to go, Zach!

March 2022

• Dr. Fabrisia Ambrosio got featured on the Pitt Tonight show as a guest speaker! Check out the interview on YouTube here.
• Congratulations to Gabby, who just published “A retrospective analysis of clinical utilization between patients who used telemedicine and office visits in outpatient Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation clinics during the COVID-19 pandemic“, in the American Journal of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation!
• Congratulations to Dr. Kai Wang on securing the first position for Poster Award – Tissue Engineering section at the McGowan Retreat 2022!
• Congratulations to William Conkright, Meaghan Beckner, Amrita Sahu, and co-authors! Their article titled, “Men and Women Display Distinct Extracellular Vesicle Biomarker Signatures in Response to Military Operational Stress” has been accepted to the Journal of Applied Physiology.

February 2022

• Dr. Fabrisia Ambrosio has been elected to the 2022 Class of the AIMBE College of Fellows! The College of Fellows is comprised of the top two percent of medical and biological engineers in the country. We congratulate Dr. Ambrosio for receiving this prestigious award! More about this announcement here.
• Congratulations to Meaghan Beckner, William Conkright, Amrita Sahu, Zach Clemens, and co-authors on their latest publication, “Utility of Extracellular Vesicles as a Potential Biological Indicator of Physiological Resilience During Military Operational Stress,” which was just accepted for publication in Physiological Reports!

December 2021

• Congratulations to Hirotaka Iijima, Gabby Gilmer, Kai Wang, Sruthi Sivakumar, and co-authors! Meta-analysis integrated with multi-omics data analysis to elucidate pathogenic mechanisms of age-related knee osteoarthritis in mice, has been accepted into the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences!
• UPMC did a press release on our recently published article in Nature Aging.
• Congratulations to Amrita Sahu, Zachary Clemens, Sunita Shinde, Sruthi Sivakumar, and co-authors! Manuscript titled “Regulation of aged skeletal muscle regeneration by extracellular vesicles” published in Nature Aging!

August 2021

• New collaboration! NIH has approved our proposal in response to the RFA, Administrative supplement to support collaborations to improve the AI/ML-readiness of NIH-supported data. Together with Dr. Newell Washburn and Dr. Phil Leduc at CMU, we will further our understanding of aging and muscle stem cell biology using Bayesian optimization strategies.
• Pittsburgh Business Times announced Dr. Fabrisia Ambrosio as the winner of Women of Influence this year!

June 2021

• Zachary Hettinger was recently accepted into the Division of Geriatric’s NIH-funded T32 postdoctoral training program, a program tailored towards specialized training in translational geroscience research (https://dom.pitt.edu/geri/training/btresearchtraining/t32-training/). The goal of this 2-year NIH-funded T32 training program is to produce the next generation of young investigators with the knowledge and skills necessary to succeed in a career in clinical and translational geroscience research.
• Will Conkright placed 2nd in the 2021 National American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) President’s Cup Competition. The President’s Cup takes winners from each of the 10 ACSM regional chapters to compete at the national level.
• Healthcare Radius Magazine published a write-up featuring our eLife manuscript, Clemens et.al. 2021.