Graduate student Anna Tarakanova and Professor Markus Buehler were selected as recipients of the 2012 Minerals, Metals & Materials Society (TMS) Structural Materials Division JOM Best Paper Award. The paper, “A Materiomics Approach to Spider Silk: Protein Molecules to Webs,” was published in February 2012. Tarakanova was also a co-author with Buehler of an article that appeared on the cover of Nature Feb. 2, 2012. She continues to incorporate spider silk research but has now expanded to looking into the challenging problem of identifying the structure and mechanics of elastin.