Congratulations to Hessein Ali for defending his candidacy. Hessein joined to COSMOS Lab at Spring 2017. He is currently a PhD student at the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Central Florida. He does research on biological structures for the design of synthetic materials focusing on biomimetic scales. Some of his work addresses the mechanical behavior of dermal scales found in nature which opens way for developing the structure-property-architecture framework for design and optimization of these topologically leveraged solids. He also works on addressing the mechanism behind fur antifouling to come up with good design procedures for antifouling surfaces.