December 2025

• Kaavya joined the lab. Welcome Kaavya!

November 2025

• The Ambrosio Lab received the Gold – My Green Lab Certification!
• Congratulations to the poster session winners from the Ambrosio Lab at Regen Rehab ‘25!
  • Tyler McNeill won 2^nd place!
  • Nayana Harilal won 3^rd place!
• Kai Wang presented at Regen Rehab ’25!

October 2025

• Tyler McNeill won 1^st place at the 2025 Frontiers in Myogenesis poster session!
• Kandarp Dave gave an excellent oral presentation at the 2025 Frontiers in Myogenesis conference!
• Ahmed Almaghasilah joined the lab. Welcome Ahmed!

September 2025

• Nayana Harilal joined the lab. Welcome Nayana!

August 2025

• NEW PAPER! “Novel information theoretic approach reveals loss of effective biomolecular communication in aging muscle cells,” was accepted for publication in the Journal of Gerontology: Biological Sciences. Congrats, Shruthi and Team!
• Antonio’s paper, “From Signals to Systems: Mapping the Complex Physiology of Cardiorespiratory Dynamics with Information Theory,” was accepted in the Journal of Physiology! Congratulations Antonio!

July 2025

• Ekaterina Creed welcomed her little bundle of joy, Vasilisa, to the world!

June 2025

• The lab welcomed Monzir who will be working as an Undergrad Research Trainee!
• Dr. Kandarp Dave presented, “Exercise-Primed Extracellular Vesicles Improve Aged Chondrocyte Health in Knee Osteoarthritis via Enhanced Uptake and microRNA-29 Transfer” at the Dr. J. Robert Shaughnessy PM&R Research & Education Day!
• Dr. Kandarp Dave was awarded Best MSK Research, Congratulations Kandarp on your exciting musculoskeletal research!

May 2025

• New award! Dr. Fabrisia Ambrosio and Dr. Hirotaka Iijima secured a grant totaling over $3 million dollars from the NIH. This grant will fund studies looking into mechano-regulation of circulating extracellular vesicle cargoes to enhance knee joint health.
• The lab welcomed a new Undergrad Research Trainee, Antonio!

April 2025

• New paper! “The age-dependent influence of the infrapatellar fat pad on chondrocyte extracellular matrix production.” published in The Journals of Gerontology!

March 2025

• Kai was appointed Assistant Professor in the Department of Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation at Harvard Medical School. Congratulations, Dr. Wang!!
• Hannah has been accepted into Emory University School of Medicine! Congratulations, Hannah!!
• The lab said goodbye to Nana as she continues her collaborative work. We hope to see you back at the lab soon!

February 2025

• Nana was awarded her JSPS International Collaborative Research Grant – this competitive program allows her to continue collaborating with the Ambrosio Lab. Congratulations, Dr. Takenaka!!

January 2025

• Dr. Gilmer and team’s paper, “Menopause-induced 17β-estradiol and progesterone loss increases senescence markers, matrix disassembly and degeneration in mouse cartilage.” was published in Nature Aging!
• New awards! Dr. Fabrisia Ambrosio recently secured two major grants totaling more than $6.4 million from the NIH. The first grant will fund studies to evaluate the underlying mechanisms by which the ECM is compromised in skeletal muscle aging and whether muscle activity might be able to counteract these effects to promote muscle regeneration. The second grant will support Dr. Ambrosio’s work in collaboration with Spaulding co–principal investigator Hirotaka Iijima, PhD, examining the intersection of sex and gender influences on the onset of knee osteoarthritis.

December 2024

• The Ambrosio Lab celebrated the Holiday Season with a lunch and hang out!

November 2024

• Welcome to our new post-doc Dr. Guang Jia to the lab!

October 2024

• Welcome to our newest post-docs of the lab:
  • Dr. Tyler McNeill
  • Dr. Nana Takenaka-Ninagawa
  • Dr. Kun Man
• Congratulations to Hannah who will be moving to full time with the lab as a Research Technician!!

September 2024

• The Ambrosio Lab held its second annual retreat, “‘Joint’ Discoveries in Communication”!
• Welcome to our newest Post-doc, Dr. Kandarp Dave!
• The lab said goodbyes to Eman and Matheus.

August 2024

• This month was a big month of goodbyes, as many of our members have left the labs to the next chapters of their lives!
  • Goodbye to Dr. Hettinger, who will be starting his new appointment at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation.
  • Goodbye to Dr. Gilmer, who will be finishing her medical degree at the University of Pittsburgh.
  • Goodbye to Nafiseh, who will be the Biology Lab Coordinator at the Phillips Academy.
  • Goodbye to Ada and Melissa, who completed their time with the lab for the summer.
    • We will miss you all and thank you for your contributions!
• Congratulations to Dr. Gilmer whose paper, “Loss of estradiol and progesterone with menopause increases chondrocyte senescence, diminishes matrix quality, and exacerbates cartilage degeneration” was accepted into Nature Aging. Go Dr. Gilmer!!!
• Way to go Ada and Melissa for an impressive presentation on the EV work they completed during the summer!!
• Congratulations to Adam whose paper, “Timely interventions: aerobic exercise and microvascular health post-menopause” was accepted into The Journal of Physiology. Go Adam!!!

July 2024

• Welcome to our high school research interns, Ada and Melissa, from Project Success at Harvard Medical School.
• Welcome to Dr. Eman Thabet, our visit researcher from the Alexandria Faculty of Medicine.

June 2024

• Congratulations to Dr. Gilmer for her phenomenal dissertation defense!
• The Ambrosio Lab attended and participated in the PM&R Research & Education Day at Spaulding. Our group took home three awards:
  • Dr. Ambrosio was awarded the “Distinguished Research Mentor Award“
  • Dr. Wang was awarded the “Claire M. Donaldson Young Investigator Award“
  • Dr. Hettinger was awarded the “Best Musculoskeletal Research Award“

Congratulations, all!

May 2024

• Congratulations to Hirotaka for being appointed as Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School!
• Congratulations to Zach on his new appointment as an Assistant Professor at the Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation!

April 2024

• Gabby won the first place poster award at the Greater Philadelphia Orthopedic Research Symposium as well as Best Basic Science Presentation at the Medical Student Orthopedic Society. Congratulations Gabby on your achievements!
• Welcome Sophia and Matheus, our visiting fellows, to the lab!

March 2024

• Gabby has won the Third Place Poster Award, Alliance for Regenerative Rehabilitation Research and Teaching, Regenerative Rehabilitation Symposium. Congratulations Gabby!
• Gabby was awarded the Martinos Center Women in Science Travel Award as well as the Alliance for Regenerative Rehabilitation Research and Teaching, Regenerative Rehabilitation Symposium, Travel Award. Go Gabby!

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.