Congratulations to Ryan Locke, PhD!

Ryan Locke successfully defends dissertation

Congratulations to the Killian Lab's first PhD student, Ryan Locke, on successfully defending their dissertation titled: Preclinical Translation of Therapeutic Interventions for Tendon Injury . Ryan's dissertation work started in 2016 and, as a founding member of the lab, he helped set the tone and the culture for research to come. In this post, we celebrate the accomplishments of Doc Locke over the years.

Ryan started in the lab in February 2016, and also helped push us to join Instagram!

Ryan quickly mastered the design of mechanical testing fixtures using 3-D printing. He's used these a lot for testing tendon-bone attachments!

Here's more cool 3D printing from Ryan! Ryan used microCT images of mouse hips from our Hip Instability studies to make scaled, 3D printed models for teaching and learning. Plus they are really cool. The Hip Instability paper went on to win the JOR Early Career Award in 2018!

Ryan's first first-authored review publication on tendon-bone attachments was published in ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering in December 2016.

One of Ryan's favorite places in Newark was Woodfired Pizza, which is also one of the Killian Lab's favorite places. Coincidence? Nah.

Preparations of ORS can sometime lead to impromptu review of posters by snowpeople.

En route to our first ORS out of BWI, Ryan, Megan, and Beth met Senator Warren. She wished us good luck and was excited to hear that Beth was going to Penn for VMD training, because that's where her pup is treated.

We have a great community in ortho!

The topic of Ryan's first ORS poster (pictured here) was also his first first-authored research manuscript!

A histology master, Ryan received recognition for this image in the Art in Science competition as well as the ORS Scientific Photo Competition.

Always a team player, Ryan has been active in the Grad BMES group and was one of its founding members at UD!

Ryan's first podium talk at ORS in 2019 on his PBM work. This work was later published in JOR.

Reviewing abstracts for BMES is a team effort!

We like to celebrate lots of things, including the ever-aging PI. But also, Ryan was awarded the University of Delaware Doctoral Fellowship, so he's kind of a big deal.

At the 2019 SB3C meeting in Silver Springs, Pennsylvania, Ryan gave a great talk on mitochondrial gene expression in tendon healing and growth.

The lab was the biggest ever during the summer of 2019, and Ryan played a big role in mentoring five UG students during this time! Phew!

Ryan presented some of his dissertation research at BMES in 2019.

To celebrate the end of the fall semester, we did our first bar crawl in Newark. Unfortunately, we only made it to like three places.

Ryan (and Killian Lab) enjoyed our last BME holiday party before the lab moved to Michigan.

Ryan and Roni mastered working from home even before the COVID19 pandemic hit. Here is Roni giving constructive feedback on Ryan's ORS 2020 poster.

#TweettheTib at ORS2020 in Phoenix

ORS2020! We recently submitted a paper for review that is posted on bioRxiv that Ryan co-authored and Anna Lia & Rachel presented at the meeting.

Ryan presented his mitochondrial work at the ORS2020 meeting. Stay tuned for the paper soon!

Ryan, you are amazing. We wish you the best of luck on your next adventure and look forward to following you along the way!