New Mexico Trip!

Heather and I just got to go back to New Mexico with Emily and Eric. Emily had been there before, but this was the first trip for Eric. It was good for Emily to get to experience New Mexico as an older kid after hearing Heather and I talk about it for so many years.

We got to see family in Carlsbad and Las Cruces, with some recruiting tasks for me at NMSU on behalf of Lincoln Lab. It was hard to believe, but it was Heather's 1st trip back to NMSU in 14 years. Phyllis and Doug (aka Grandmacita & Bampaw) drove up to Carlsbad all the way from Hunt/Kerrville, TX. We stayed with Fenner and Stasia at their lovely home in Carlsbad. They were more than fantastic hosts, as they endured sleeping on an inflatable mattress for 2 nights while Heather, Eric, and I had their master bedroom suite, and Em slept in Mason's room. They have Fenner's grandparents' old house, and Stasia (ok, and Fenner too... ;-) have done a fantastic job at decorating it and making it their own. It was our first time to get to meet Mason, and their first time to see Eric. Good times, and plenty of those great, late night talks for trips that never seem to be as long as you'd like!

Then, after a quick stop at Carlsbad Caverns, we were off to Las Cruces so I could attend some meetings, a career fair, and a day of interviews. Josh Barron (my cousin) even made the trip down from NM Tech in Socorro to interview with Lincoln Lab (and he did a great job, so keep your fingers crossed!!!). My mom and dad came down with Katie, Kyla, & Scotty. We enjoyed a few of days together swimming, eating Mexican food, and spent about 1/3 of the time with Matt Bernard and his superfun wife Anna. Then it was back to El Paso, then 3 airplanes to Providence, RI, then the drive back up to Chelmsford, MA! Whew!

We had a great time, and one of the best aspects was getting to see the younger nieces (Mason!) and nephews (Scotty!) for the first time, and the cousins had tons of fun playing together. Emily is close in age to Brenden and Kyla, was sad to leave, and told us she wished she could live closer to all of her cousins. It was also great to see some of the wonderful vistas for which NM is famous. Here is a link to the photo album on Picasa (cut 'n' paste the line below if the link above doesn't work).

http://picasaweb.google.com/jefepalm/NewMexicoTrip?authkey=oxPlF3G1sHs#

Emily & Jeff @ Fenway Park

Emily & I enjoyed a GREAT afternoon at Fenway Park. We got great seats behind home plate, and not far from the field. The game was exciting, Emily's favorite player (Dustin Pedroia) hit a home run that got the Red Sox started on a comeback that ended with a dramatic, walk-off win in the bottom of the 9th inning! The weather couldn't have been better, and we had a great walk back across the Charles river over to MIT for some dinner before catching the shuttle to go home.

Eric's 2nd Birthday Photos

Here are some pictures from Eric's 2nd birthday celebration. Yes, that's an Elmo whoopie pie for those closet Sesame Street fans (and closet whoopie pie fans) out there! There's a bunch of pics in the loop, but you can speed up the slide show and it's kinda fun to watch. Eric loved the whoopie pie, tearing the paper (& every last piece of tape!) off of his present, and playing with his new "Thomas the train" wooden trainset. Trains and tractors (thanks g'parents!) were big hits this year, and he gets me out of bed every morning to play with them (& every evening too). He has some wooden cars that also run perfectly on the wooden train tracks, which makes for great adventures... and Eric likes them too! :-)

Final PhD Thesis Committee Meeting...

A few people have been asking, so I figured I would place an update here on the blog... For those who don't want all of the gory details, the long and the short of it is that the committee thinks I'm on schedule and recommended that I defend in May (so I can walk in the June commencement and your trips out here won't be in vain)!

The "thesis committee" is made up of 4 professors that meet periodically to review my research, make suggestions, and file a report with the mechanical engineering department about my status (e.g. student is doing good work, student is doing bad work, student belongs in a looney bin, etc.). Well, I had my final thesis committee meeting last Friday. The final thesis committee meeting consists of evaluating all of the work, and basically evaluating to see if (in their judgment) it is "enough" for a PhD. If they see holes in the work, don't like the results, etc., they can vote to keep the PhD going a little longer and reschedule the final meeting and the ultimate defense.

So I was a bit anxious going into the meeting since I hadn't completed absolutely everything that my advisor had put on my plate. But I *did* have 4 chapters written (~160 pages), and so my advisor suggested that I print them out and put them on the table for them to review if they wanted to. I wasn't looking at their reactions, but she was - and she told me later that their eyes got big and they looked surprised when they saw so much was written with still 7 weeks to go before the defense (5 weeks before the final "draft" is due). Well, the presentation went well and I got some good comments and suggestions. Their final evaluation that they gave the department was that the work was excellent and they recommended that I go ahead with the defense on May 23rd. They even asked if I wouldn't mind moving up the defense by a few days to accommodate the travel plans of one of the profs... I didn't exactly jump at that offer, but we'll see. :-) After everyone was gone, my advisor congratulated me, smiled and said, "Well, it looks like it's going to happen." (that comment + her "excellent" review are considered very positive feedback for her!)

So as things stand right now, I'm writing the final "technical" chapter (6 technical chapters + 1 future work/conclusions chapter) and I'm rewriting Chapter 2 based on my advisor's comments/edits. I still have some bugs to work out in my code for some of the final plots in the last 2 technical chapters, and those are driving me a bit nutty... but hopefully those will get worked out and I can update the plots/text accordingly.

There are 2 big milestones to go: (1) Final draft of thesis due on May 9th, (2) Thesis defense on May 23rd. The final draft of the thesis goes out for public review on May 9th so people can be ready to ask questions at the defense. After the defense presentation (which is open to the public), anyone can ask questions about my work (!), then they kick out everyone but MIT professors (and me) and they grill me in private, then they kick me out and vote on whether or not I passed the defense (or play cards, or chat about the weather... we really don't know what they do in there!). They also decide what extra work I need to add to the final version of the thesis. When they come out, they either have frowns on their faces, or they address you as "Doctor." I've watched this happen for several friends of mine, and it's fun (albeit a bit bizarre) experience. They all say it's a weird feeling for them to be on that side of things after having watched so many defenses as a grad student. So here's to hoping for that weird (but GOOD) feeling!

Cytoskeletal Modeling paper is out!

Well, my cytoskeletal modeling paper is finally out! It's titled "Constitutive Modeling of the Stress-Strain Behavior of F-Actin Filament Networks" and it's in the journal Acta Biomaterialia. Here's a link to the journal - Journal Link

And here's a link to the PDF if you don't have access to the PDF at the journal site - PDF Link

So check it out anytime you're having problems falling asleep! :-)

A perfect excuse for not doing your homework...

So after a long night of studying, you can feel pretty brain-dead... in fact, you can feel like you've got nothing left upstairs. I guess that was part of rationale behind the latest "hack" (prank) at MIT.Today hackers placed boxes with clear fronts, chainsaws, and the text 'In Case of Zombie Attack, Break Glass' on the front in the lobbies of MIT's buildings 16 and 46. The selection of Building 46 was a clear reference to the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences housed there... probably a reference to zombies' traditional diet. Not that I'm condoning that kind of behavior (the zombies, not the hackers!). ;-)

Squishy Physics @ Harvard

Another item of note from last week was an invited talk I gave at Harvard on my research. The seminar series is called "Squishy Physics" and talks about the physics and mechanics of soft condensed matter (translation: how stressed out slime and goo can get). They look at all sorts of materials (cells, tissues, gels of all sorts, etc.). It was interesting to go back there, and I still have thoughts of "What if?" as I walk around those buildings since I almost decided to go there for the doctorate. Here's the link current and the link for past talks:

http://www.seas.harvard.edu/projects/weitzlab/squishy.html
http://www.seas.harvard.edu/projects/weitzlab/squishypast.html

Before the talk I saw a friend from Lincoln Lab who is also getting a PhD at Hahvahd. He and his wife also just had their SECOND child while in grad school (they have 4 in all)! And she homeschools too! Zykes... just when I start to feel good & sorry for myself, I go and meet up with him. It takes all the fun out of my pity party. Well, after chatting with my friend, I went to go find the location for the seminar, but didn't see anyone there (only 5-10 min before the scheduled start). So I went over to a custodian and asked if he knew where there was a seminar on that night... he had no clue... so then I mention that they probably make a bit of a mess with leftover pizza boxes, etc. - and then he says, "Oh yeah, I know where they meet. It's the next floor up." So I asked him if I could hitch a ride in the elevator with him. He told me (with a wink) that it was going to cost me some money for the ride... But I told him, alas, that I went to MIT, and not Harvard, so I didn't have any money! He laughed, shook his finger mockingly at me, then took me up to the seminar.

The seminar went well. I got some good questions and some silly questions ("I doubt your model can do _____...actually, it's not fair to ask you that, I shouldn't have asked...I withdraw the question!"). It was fun sharing ideas with them (and sparring with them too). In the end, my host said they measure the success of the talks by how much pizza is left over. So at least I felt good that the pizza was all consumed, although I told him it was probably a reflection on the quality of the pizza rather than the speaker . :-) All in all, a fun (albeit a bit bizarre) evening.

The Joys of Stress Relaxation

Well, I had a small breakthrough last week while I was trying to get one of my models to work... It was a viscoelastic model (which simulates stresses relaxing in objects over time), but it had a bug in it somewhere and I'd been trying to track it down for weeks... ugh! But I finally found the problem, got the correct behavior out of the model, and then proceeded to do a little jig in the family room in front of Heather while saying, "I finally got stress relaxation to work!!!". Well, Heather looks up at this odd sight and deadpans, "I've been waiting 3 1/2 years for that moment to come!" It took me a second to get the joke... which in itself is a cautionary tale for those toying with the idea of getting a PhD at a place like the one I'm at. :-) Well, a couple of more months of using that stress relaxation and writing about it and hopefully we'll get some real relaxation!

In all seriousness, please keep me (and Heather and the kiddos) in your prayers since I'll need all the help and stamina I can get over the next 6-8 weeks when all of the work needs to be finished up and I have to do the 200-300 pg write-up. 8-0