News Archive: 2012–2015

2015

Dec 2015	Prof. Schniepp delivers an invited Keynote Speech at the 6th International Conference on Mechanics of Biomaterials and Tissues.
Dec 2015	Sean Koebley's poster on the toughness of the brown recluse spider was nominated for Best Poster Award at the 2015 MRS Fall National Meeting in Boston, MA.
Nov 2015	We present several papers at the 2015 Fall MRS Meeting in Boston, MA on topics including the brown recluse ribbon silk, self-assembly of silk molecules, graphene/polyimide coatings, and graphene-enhanced nylon with extended lifetime.
Oct 2015	Our research on the silk of the brown recluse spider is highlighted by the ideation magazine article: "Unraveling the secret of silk that's more alive than dead".
Sep 2015	Cover Story in the Daily Press featuring our recently published research on shear-induced self-assembly of molecularly thin silk fibrils. There is also a corresponding Video Interview.
Sep 2015	Hannes Schniepp is named a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Nanoscience with Advanced Technology (Verizona Publisher).
Aug 2015	Ph. D. student Qijue Wang receives the 2015 Fall Graduate Studies Advisory Board Recruitment Fellowship.
Aug 2015	The National Science Foundation (NSF) has made a 4-year, $324,000 award from the DMREF program (Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future) to Prof. Schniepp, starting Oct. 2015.
Aug 2015	New publication: "Silk Reconstitution Disrupts Fibroin Self-Assembly" by authors Koebley, Greving, Vollrath & Schniepp*, just appeared in Biomacromolecules. More information in our Press Release.
Jul 2015	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “The Strong and Sticky Silk Nano-Ribbons of the Recluse Spider: Structure, Properties, and Formation of A Quasi-2D Protein Material” at the Institute for Building Materials, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.
Jun 2015	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “The Strong and Sticky Silk Nano-Ribbons of the Recluse Spider: Structure, Properties, and Formation of A Quasi-2D Protein Material”, Max-Plack Institute of the Science of Light, Sandoghdar Division, Erlangen, Germany.
May 2015	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “Probing Oil–Mineral Interactions Under Reservoir Conditions Using Atomic Force Spectroscopy”, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland.
May 2015	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “The Brown Recluse Spider’s Super-Strong & Sticky Silk Nanoribbons”, Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland.
May 2015	Prof. Schniepp gives and invited talk “From Molecular Self-Assembly to High-Performance Material: Studying Spider Silk Across the Length Scales”, Department of Health Science and Technology, ETH Zürich, Switzerland.
Apr 2015	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “Brown Recluse Spider’s Nanometer-Scale Ribbons of Strong Sticky Silk”, Adolphe-Merkle-Institute, Fribourg, Switzerland.
Apr 2015	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “From Molecular Self-Assembly to High-Performance Material: Studying Spider Silk Across the Length Scales”, University of Bayreuth, Germany.
Mar 2015	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “Brown Recluse Spider’s Nanometer-Scale Ribbons of Strong Sticky Silk”, Physics Colloquium, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA.
Feb 2015	For the term 2015–2018, The College of William & Mary has designated Prof. Schniepp the Adina Allen Term Distinguished Associate Professor of Applied Science in recognition for his contributions in teaching and research.

2014

Dec 2014	"Highly Cited" Status for 5th Paper: Our 2012 paper “Methods of Graphite Exfoliation” has now reached “highly cited” status, as it is in the top 1% of all papers in Materials Science. This is Prof. Schniepp's 5th “highly cited” paper.
Dec 2014	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “Probing Oil–Mineral Interactions Under Reservoir Conditions Using Atomic Force Spectroscopy”, Shell International Exploration, The Hague, The Netherlands.
Oct 2014	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “Brown Recluse Spider’s Nanometer-Scale Ribbons of Strong Sticky Silk”, Materials Colloquium, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zürich, Switzerland.
Oct 2014	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “Brown Recluse Spider’s Nanometer-Scale Ribbons of Strong Sticky Silk”, Universität Basel, Biologie-Colloquium, Basel, Switzerland.
Oct 2014	Prof. Schniepp gives a keynote lecture on “Spider Silk Ribbons — Model System for A Natural High-Performance Material”, at the 2nd Virginia Soft Matter Workshop, at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
Sep 2014	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “Spider Silk Nanoribbons — A Prototype for Strong and Tough Protein Films”, Sino-Swiss Science and Technology Corporation Workshop, ETH Zürich.
Aug 2014	Ph. D. student Qijue Wang receives the 2014 Fall Graduate Studies Advisory Board Recruitment Fellowship.
Aug 2014	Ph. D. student Sean Koebley receives a 2014–2015 Graduate STEM Research Fellowship, Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC).
Aug 2014	Prof. Schniepp joins the Department of Materials Science (D-MATL) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, for one year as a guest professor, hosted by Prof. André Studart.
May 2014	Prof. Schniepp is the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award from the U. S. National Science Foundation (award # DMR-1352542). The award will provide a total of $450,000 over 5 years to investigate the ribbon silk of the loxosceles spider.
Apr 2014	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “From Molecular Self-Assembly to High-Performance Material: Studying Spider Silk Across the Length Scales”, 1st Annual Colloids and Surfaces Symposium at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.
Mar 2014	Discovery Channel Canada airs a TV feature of our brown recluse silk project in their science show Daily Planet (7:00 pm show on March 10).
Mar 2014	William & Mary produces the 4-minute video story "In the lab: 'Milking' brown recluse spiders for silk" about our work on brown recluse spider silk.
Feb 2014	Our work reporting the first large-scale exfoliation of hexagonal Boron Nitride nanosheets is published in Small.
Feb 2014	Hannes Schniepp is awarded Tenure at the College of William & Mary and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor.
Feb 2014	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited presentation “2D High-Performance Nanomaterials:From Graphene to Spider Silk”, Nanomaterials Workshop, National Institute of Aerospace, Langley, VA.
Jan 2014	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited presentation “Converting the Traditional Classroom Experience Into a Video Stream For Inverted Learning”, eLearning Community Meeting, The College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, VA.

2013

Dec 2013	Advanced Materials features our brown recluse silk paper out of all communications of the Dec 23 issue with a full-page frontispiece.
Nov 2013	We present several papers at the 2013 Fall MRS Meeting in Boston, MA on topics including self-organization of silk protein and the loxosceles ribbon silk.
Oct 2013	The Daily Press, Hampton Roads' big newspaper, prominently features our research on the recluse spider silk with a long online article, accompanied with pictures and a video interview. In the print edition, our story had a large title page feature in the Oct 15 issue.
Oct 2013	Chemical & Engineering News feature: C & E News features our paper on the recluse spider silk in their October 28 issue.
Oct 2013	Virginia Gazette brown recluse feature: Our research on the silk of the brown recluse spider is featured with a story and photos in their October 19 issue.
Oct 2013	PhD student Sean R. Koebley gives an invited talk “Brown Recluse Spider’s Nanometer Scale Ribbons of Stiff, Extensible Silk”, at the Rotary Club at City Center, Newport News, Virginia.
Oct 2013	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “The Brown Recluse Spider’s Nano-Ribbons of Strong Sticky Silk”, William & Mary PhysicsFest, Williamsburg, Virginia.
Oct 2013	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “Soft-Contact AFM of Surfactant Assemblies at the Solid/Liquid Interface Revealing Local Surface Chemistry”, Seminar at Shell International Exploration, The Hague, The Netherlands.
Oct 2013	Daily Press Video Interview: Interview with Prof. Schniepp about our research on the recluse spider silk. This is goes along with their long article, accompanied with pictures.
Oct 2013	Our research on the silk of the brown recluse spider is highlighted by the ideation magazine article: "Unraveling the secret of silk that's more alive than dead".
Oct 2013	The WIRED magazine highlights our research on the silk of the brown recluse spider with an exciting article.
Sep 2013	The prestigious journal Advanced Materials accepts our landmark article on the silk of the recluse spider. We are the first to study the mechanical properties of this exciting material. See our Press Release for more information.
Jul 2013	Hannes Schniepp will serve as the new Director of Graduate Studies for the Applied Science Department, starting September 01, 2013.
Jun 2013	Hannes Schniepp is named a member of the editorial board of the new journal Advances in Chemistry (Hindawi).
May 2013	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk at NASA's Langley Research Center on 2D-High-Performance Materials.
May 2013	Pei Pang joins our team as a research undergraduate student. Pei is currently a sophomore in William & Mary's chemistry department.
Jan 2013	Hannes Schniepp is named a member of the editorial board of the journal Graphene (American Scientific Publishers).
Jan 2013	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited lecture on in the Soft Matter Seminar in the Physics Department of Georgetown University.

2012

Dec 2012	We congratulate our team member Minzhen Cai for graduating with a Ph.D. from the Applied Science Department at William & Mary.
Nov 2012	We present four papers at the 2012 Fall MRS Meeting in Boston, MA on topics including self-organization of silk protein, graphene-based nanocomposites, molecular surfactant self-assembly on graphene, and graphene oxide as a band gap material.
Oct 2012	Our paper on Graphite Exfoliation was the third-most read article in the entire Journal of Materials Chemistry in September 2012 — within days after online publication (September 12, 2012).
Sep 2012	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited talk “Functionalized Graphene — Building Block for High-Performance Polymer Nanocomposites”, DuPont seminar, Richmond, Virginia.
Sep 2012	Our paper on improved titanium surface treatments for implants gets published in The International Journal of Oral and Maxillofacial Implants "Effects of Coating a Titanium Alloy with Fibronectin on the Expression of Osteoblast Gene Markers in the MC3T3 Osteoprogenitor Cell Line" Int. J. Oral Maxillofac. Implants 27, 1081–1090 (2012).
Aug 2012	We publish a new paper on graphene exfoliation in The Journal of Materials Chemistry: "Methods of Graphite Exfoliation" J. Mater. Chem. 22, 24992—25002 (2012).
Aug 2012	Ph. D. student Sean Koebley receives a 2012–2013 Graduate STEM Research Fellowship, Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VSGC).
Aug 2012	We present three papers at the 244th ACS National Fall Meeting in Philadelphia, PA on the topics of polymer nanocomposites, oil–mineral interactions, and molecular self-organization on graphene.
Jul 2012	Our paper on molecular self-organization on graphene gets published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry C: "Charge-Driven Selective Adsorption of Sodium Dodecyl Sulfate on Graphene Oxide Visualized by Atomic Force Microscopy" J. Phys. Chem. C 116, 20080–20085 (2012).
May 2012	We congratulate our team member Daniel Thorpe for graduating with a B.S. from the Biology Department at William & Mary. Daniel will continue his studies at the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Harvard University.
May 2012	We congratulate our team member James Nebeker for graduating with a B.S. from the Physics Department at William & Mary. James will move on to the Graduate Program of Georgetown University.
May 2012	Prof. Schniepp gives an invited presentation at the E-MRS Spring Meeting in Strasbourg/France ("Biomaterials" Symposium).
May 2012	"Lighter, Stronger, Better" — our research on graphene-based high-performance polymer nanocomposites is featured in the ideation magazine.
Apr 2012	Our paper on orientational order of surfactant micelles on gold gets published in Nano LIFE: "Phonon-Induced Anisotropic Dispersion Forces On A Metallic Substrate" Nano LIFE 02, 1240001 (2012).
Mar 2012	We have a new publication on a novel solvent system for graphene (J. Am. Chem. Soc.): "Stabilization of Graphene Sheets by a Structured Benzene/Hexafluorobenzene Mixed Solvent". J. Am. Chem. Soc., 134, 5018–5021 (2012).
Mar 2012	"Making spider-sense" — our ground breaking discoveries on the silk protein are featured in the ideation magazine.
Feb 2012	Our paper on the silk worm protein gets published in Biomacromolecules: "Shear-Induced Self-Assembly of Native Silk Proteins into Fibrils Studied by Atomic Force Microscopy". Biomacromolecules, 13, 676–682 (2012).