A Christmas Letter December 2015 Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone.

Here is our second annual online Christmas letter. I do love technology. My next question is, where did the year go? I missed it. It went by so fast and

there was so much going on that I still have this giant pile of stuff that I wanted to do. Sigh. Maybe next year. So the quick summary is: lots of activities, lots of travel, not enough sleep. As 2014 was

closing, we were in New York City for lots and lots of shows but came home for New Year’s. In the Spring we had wonderful trips to Disneyworld (Katia and Lisa) and Athens, Greece (Alexi and Nico). During the summer we did Disney yet again (can you ever do too

much Disney? Katia says no) with our first Disney Cruise, visiting Mexico, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica and the Bahamas. And as we finish this letter we are also packing to go to our biannual visit to Kaanapali Beach, Maui, Hawaii.

This year was quite a different year in Austin with much rainfall (was there any sunshine in May?), which means that our trees and plants are very happy and our lakes and rivers are full. We tried to enjoy our home as much as possible with movies on the back deck. We have a couple of foxes that come to visit regularly and a black cat just started visiting last week. That adds to the birds, squirrels, rabbits, possums, armadillos, deer and (unfortunately) coyotes that we see on a regular basis. It’s awesome having a forest just beyond your back fence.

So what has Katia been up to? Creating, studying, traveling and more creating. She jumped into her first High School musical, Cabaret, helping to design and create all the costumes. (Thank you Aunt Catia for amazing tickets to Cabaret on Broadway when we were there last December!) She finally got a chance to get a really good look, inside and out at a DeLorean which she had been wanting to do for years. You do know what year this is, right?? Then she and Lisa had a full week at Disneyworld, seeing every Princess and riding just the right rides (Haunted Mansion…) at just the right times. Katia is a pro at Disney. She finished her Freshman year and had a short week off before heading to Duke for three weeks of the Duke TIP program and Abnormal Psychology. She

decided to try something other than architecture this year and it was definitely not her favorite class. She made some amazing new friends though, three of whom came to visit in July to celebrate her

birthday with other Austin friends at Six Flags in San Antonio (Hi Cat, Eli and Zach). She spent three weeks working in Nico’s lab through his High School students program and although she still does not want to be a biomedical engineer, it was a fun time. Also in July (you see where there is no time for sleep…) we went on our first Disney Cruise. More details on that a bit later. She rounded out the summer with Camp Half Blood and an entire week off (gulp) before field hockey preseason started and then school again. She also managed to get certified for scuba diving over the summer and fall, getting ready for next week in Maui. September and field hockey found her on the road every weekend. October brought the ACL Music Festival, a trip to Lexington to visit Zach and a trip to Cornell to see their Architecture program.

Also in October was “Back to the Future Day” (10/21/15) which was a lot of fun including all three BTTF movies, one a quote-along. The month ended with Halloween and the unveiling of a big project, a Rapunzel costume with a five-foot-long wig. Katia made everything. Lisa and Zach joined in as Mother Gothel and Flynn Rider from Tangeled (yes, she made his vest and satchel too).

Now, she keeps creating is all sorts of media but has been doing amazing things combining fashion with sculpture and art. She created a white reed mannequin and fashioned a black dress where the mannequin and dress worked together as a sculptural work of art. She also created a top and skirt that she then used as a canvas with a sunset theme to combine fashion with more traditional painting. Early next year she has two tasks…Stage Manager and Costume Designer for the Chrysalis Dance Company’s January show and as Costume Designer for St. Stephen’s Spring Musical, The Addams Family.

Alexi finished up his last year at Bridge Point with a bang, winning a Golden Ticket for the Carnival, getting to the front of the line for everything. (He won four years ago too.) During Spring Break in

March, Nico and Alexi went to Greece to visit Athens and meet the Greek relatives for the first time. Alexi had a great time with his Aunt Louiza and Cousin Alice and he spent a lot of time climbing up the rock of Acropolis and visiting so many other sites including the church where Daddy and Mom were married 27 years earlier.

He continued playing piano through May, giving a wonderful recital as always. He scored very well in band tryouts for Hill Country and was selected to play percussion for 6th grade. He decided to take a break from piano while he started band.

This summer he spent a week at Boy Scout camp in Bastrop and had a full week of activities and getting to know his new Troop. Lisa was there for a couple of days and was really impressed with how hard all the boys worked and at all the choices they had to work on rank advancement and merit badges. Alexi also had what might have been the best camp week ever known…Pokemon camp. Our family has been into Pokemon since before the kids were born but none of us had ever actually played the

card game. Alexi spent a week learning how to do just that, with a whole bunch of other people who love Pokemon just as much as we do. That’s on his schedule already for 2016!

Of course he loved the Disney Cruise. There was a special room for kids just his age, Disney movies playing in at least two theaters at all hours and gluten-free pizza whenever he wanted it. More details on that later. The summer ended with Camp Half Blood and his friends Aidan and Meyer were able to join him this year.

So in August Alexi started Hill Country Middle School and really likes switching classes and getting to see so many friends in the different classes throughout the day. He also started Boy Scouts and is quartermaster for his patrol. He has been helping to organize the food for the campouts and made a delicious gluten-free Dutch Oven peach cobbler that made the rest of the troop a little bit jealous. In band, he is playing a lot of different instruments, including the chimes, marimba, glockenspiel, and snare drum in the Holiday concert. After six months though, he has started to miss piano. He had talked about taking a break for a year and will very likely go back to it in 2016.

Lisa started the year with her last Science Day at Bridge Point. After 10 years at Bridge Point and 10 years either volunteering, giving a course, or being in charge at Science Day, she will miss the place. However both Hill Country and St. Stephen’s are calling for her time and energy. No worries there. She was in charge of Grand’s Day at St. Stephen’s, where Grandparents come and spent most of a day going to classes with their students. She spent a lot of time taking care of Cerbee (more on that in a bit) and trying to keep the house running while everyone else was so incredibly busy. She got to see a lot of friends from high school at a special birthday party for her dance teacher, G’ann Boyd. On the professional side, she was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) where she has made major contributions for more than 25 years. However, her first resolution for 2016 will be to have more accomplishments for her section of the newsletter next year. Finishing a 3000 piece puzzle doesn’t count.

This year we finally went on a Disney Cruise! The trip started in Orlando (and we did not stop at Disneyworld, much to Katia’s dismay) then to Cape Canaveral where the Disney Fantasy was waiting. We had a good-sized cabin with the private balcony less than one minute away from the main movie theater. There were usually three different Disney movies playing at any time, including one outside by the pool. There were activities on board for all ages and special clubs for all ages. It took a couple of days to get the hang of things, but then we knew exactly what to do to get gluten-free, vegetarian or vegan food at all hours. It was amazing to have gourmet meals every evening that we knew were safe for everyone to eat and were delicious too!

We visited Cozumel where Katia got her first taste of scuba diving. Also Jamaica and Disney’s own Castaway Cay in the Bahamas for some good beach time. But the best day was our interaction with dolphins that took place in Cayman Islands. We had the opportunity to watch the premier of “Ant Man” on board with it playing in 2D in one theater and 3D in another. The midnight premier audience in both had to be the best ever. However it was clear from the fun trivia contests that we have much more about Disney to learn and we will enjoy doing just that.

We had a great happiness followed by a great sadness this year. Katia had been asking for a dog for a very long time so on January 1 we adopted Cerbee (girl version of Cerberus, the dog who guards Hades) and she was a sweetie. She was a black Chow mix, but really was just a small Chow. She got along fine with the cats, although she really wanted to play with them and they were not sure about that.

Cerbee came to us with heartworms so she went through a pretty tough time in February not being able to run and play to keep her heart calm while the treatment did its job and the heartworms died. She spent a lot of time in Katia’s art studio. Then in March she started having a cough. She had boarded while we were on the cruise so the vet thought it was kennel cough and we treated that. It didn’t seem to get any better. Some x-rays in April revealed lung cancer. She was with us only until May.

Nico opened up the doors of his lab to High School students again, who join in the summer and work with him and the lab members in a unique program designed to show them what to expect in College. Among the new students, there were friends of the family Walker Register, Hayden Mast, Zach Jones and of course Katia herself who did very well in the lab. Also this year Nico started the new Institute for Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Regenerative Medicine, located in the 5th floor of the BME building.

Nico continues traveling. This year he made 140,000 real UA miles including trips to China, Greece, Hong Kong, Poland etc. And we still have one more trip to Maui which will put him above 150,000 miles. On the other side we had a small scare with atrial fibrillation in September which led to ablation. Everything is under control now and Nico is in “sinus rhythm”.

This year, Nico travelled to some truly wonderful places. After our NYC trip in December, we found out that Nico was selected by a Greek organization among “the Greeks that changed the world in 2014”. In January he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (UK). In February and March, travelled to San Jose for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) of which he was Engineering President, Notre Dame for the Reilly Lectures and in February he opened the new Institute for Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Regenerative Medicine (IBMR) in the Cockrell College of Engineering of the University of Texas at Austin. The Institute is located in about 3,000 sq ft, in the fifth floor of the new BME Building. The student offices are in the same floor. The administrative offices are in the third floor. In March he flew to Los Angeles where he and Tony Mikos were inducted to the National Academy of Inventors (right).

At the end of March he visited Chengdu and Beijing, China. He gave a series of 14 lectures in Chengdu (left and center) and a special lecture at the Chinese Academy in Beijing . The visit of the Forbidden City was marvelous.

In April Catia Chapin, Nico’s first cousin and Alexi’s godmother invited Nico to NYC for a unique event, the annual Opera News honors at the Plaza. In that wonderful evening, Nico saw again Catia but also famous opera singers of the past including Teresa Stratas, Marilyn Horne (all in first roa), Renata Scotto, Martina Arroyo and Samuel Ramey (all in second row). Needless to say this was a vey special night for Nico.

When Amey Puranik defended successfully his PhD thesis on April 7, he was the 100th PhD in the history of the laboratory to receive his PhD. We were all delighted and celebrated the occasion with an appropriate cake and candles. These 100 students graduated from Purdue University (44), the University of Texas at Austin (40), the University of Geneva (4), the University of Paris-Sud (6) and the University of Parma (6). We started at Purdue in August 1976. The first graduate student was Todd Gehr (1978) who is now Vice Chair of Internal Medicine and Chief of Nephrology at VCU. The first PhD student to graduate was Lucy M. Hair who is now at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Appropriately enough, on April 27 and 28 and after 13 years at the University of Texas at Austin, Nico returned to the Chemical Engineering Department of Purdue University for a special celebration, i.e., to give the 50th Kelly Lectures. A truly wonderful visit of Ramki, Nick, Arvind, Elias, Linda and many others (left).

In May he visited the Simpson Querrey Institute for BioNanotechnology at Northwestern University and gave the inaugural lecture. And then he flew to Athens and then Patras for a very special event, the inaugural address at the University of Patras, Chemical Engineering Department, where he received an honorary doctorate (see above, right). Good friends Rena Bizios and Ali Khademhosseini were with him. This was a wonderful event with many friends from Greece, going all the way back to High School and the National Technical University of Athens but also our wonderful first cousins Nico and Maria Peppas.

July saw the wonderful gathering of our K-12 students who worked in the lab for four weeks. Here are some photos and I am sure you will recognize most.

Also in July, Nico went to Edinburgh, Scotland for the Controlled Release Society meeting where he was recognized for life achievements in the field (Does this sound “old”?).

Towards the end of August, Nico visited Krakow, Poland for the first time to chair the International Union of Biomaterials Societies meeting and participate in the European Society for Biomaterials meeting. He was with his close friend Mike Sefton (classmate from his MIT days, 45 years ago) and went together to the Krakow ghetto and the Schindler factory (still exists) as well as five synagogues in the city. Emotional visit. The meeting was also great and Nico was thankful of the recognition extended to him by his European colleagues via the International Award.

In September and October Nico went twice to the Academy, the first time for the Academy of Engineering and the second for the Academy of Medicine, as he is that chair of both engineering and bioengineering sections. The second time, he participated in the NAM induction ceremony of his good friends Mike Sefton and Joe DeSimone, here also with good friend Lydia Kavraki who is the vice-chair of the section.

After attending the AIChE meeting in Salt Lake City (left, with Kristi Anseth and Jennifer Sinclair Curtis), he returned to China for two weeks, visiting Chengdu, Guilin, Haiku and Guangzhou. Gret meeting, three seminars and great friends throughout. And the pandas in Chengdu were great (right)

Also this year, Nico and six of his ChE and BME colleagues started at UT a new Institute on Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Regenerative Medicine (IBDR) which has the goal to develop the next generation of advanced treatments of a number of diseases including cancer, osteoporosis, multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s diseases and diabetes as well as to come up with better medical devices for our patients. The Institute is directed by Nico and is located in the 5th floor of the new Biomedical Engineering building. Nico is also very active in assisting the new Dell School of Medicine (DMS) and has been instrumental in hiring new faculty and designing a new MS degree in biomedical engineering for MD students of DMS. In addition he is in the early stages of the design of three new one-week summer courses for medical executives, practicing engineers in the medical field, and future engineers (ie, high school students).

We close this newsletter with some Christmas photos of Katia and Alexi and some Christmas scenes from Austin.

It has been a fun year with lots of changes. We hope that this Season finds you enjoying special times with family and friends.

Merry Christmas

Lisa, Nico, Katia, Alexi, Artemis, Mittens, Melody, Pepper, and the fish