| | Dean's Message
Our clinics are essential to our success as a college—our educational, research, and patient care missions all closely tied to the success of our clinics. We should never lose sight of that reality as a college, and I wanted to take a moment to highlight a part of that which is often overlooked. Our front life office staff are essential to the success of our clinics and part of our patient care team. They are the face that patients see when they come into our clinics and the voice they hear on the phone, and they make our patients feel welcomed, comfortable, and ready to get the most from each appointment. Expressing kind words, giving an understanding smile when a patient is struggling, or directing a patient to where they need to go are all ways that you can start each patient visit off on the right foot and all these simple acts of kindness are vital for ensuring that people come back to receive the care that they need. Thank you for what you do! It matters and it makes a difference in how well we are able to care for our patients. ~Clark Stanford | | | Updates for April 21, 2023–April 27, 2023 | | | | A team of University of Iowa oral health researchers and dental providers at the Community Health Centers of Southeastern Iowa teamed up to deliver and assess the effectiveness of teledentistry in a nursing home setting. | | | On a recent trip to rural Mexico, Iowa dental students and faculty provide dental care to children in schools and orphanages in the area. | | | | The National Dental Foundation and Colgate awarded Abimbola Oladayo, a postdoctoral researcher in Azeez Butali’s laboratory, a scholarship to support her research on ethical issues related to the handling of genetic information obtained through she and her team’s research. | | | The American Student Dental Association awarded second-year dental student Zach Graham the Excellence in Advocacy Engagement Award. Advocacy is vital to the protection and welfare of dental students and the dental progression, and this award is presented to the person who participates in the most advocacy-related engagement activities. | | | | Dental students receive certification in fellowship program During the ADEA meeting in March, second-year dental student David Bridges and fourth-year dental student Chaz Konrath participated in and received certification from ADEA's Academic Dental Careers Fellowship Program. The ADEA Academic Dental Careers Fellowship Program, is a voluntary program offered by ADEA and managed by an ADCFP Liaison located at each individual academic dental program. The ADCFP goal is to discover and grow tomorrow’s dental faculty and researchers.” | | | Congratulations to Matthew Remy and Jessica Faber! Matthew Remy successfully defended his dissertation on April 7. Remy's project, Advancing Synthetic Bone Grafts: Leveraging MicroRNAs and 3D-Printing to Enhance Bone Regeneration, was mentored by Liu Hong.
Jessica Faber successfully defended her Master's thesis, Drug Delivery for Bone Tissue Engineering Mediated by Three-Dimensional Biomimetic Scaffolds, under the direction of Hongli Sun. | | | | The 2023 Donald B. Osbon Memorial Lecture will be held on Saturday, April 22, 2023, in the Galagan Auditorium at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry. This event qualifies for 6 CE credits and is free to participants who pre-register. The keynote speaker will be Daniel Buser, professor and chair of the Department of Oral Surgery at the University of Bern in Switzerland and a part-time lecturer on restorative dentistry and biomaterials science at Harvard School of Dental Medicine. | | | The College of Dentistry welcomes Ramona Jackson Ramona Jackson is a new Support Services Specialist with the call center here at the college. She previously worked at UIHC Iowa River Landing East at the front desk. She recently moved from Coralville to Cedar Rapids and often travels to the Chicago suburbs to visit with family. She is getting married to her fiancé Alex at the end of April. She is happy to be joining the College of Dentistry team! | | | | Crawford J, Morawski M, Eliason S, Wuebker S, Van Otterloo E, Cao H, Moreno L, Amendt B, Rengasamy Venugopalan S. Transcriptome analyses of murine right and left maxilla-mandibular complex. Orthod Craniofac Res. 2023 Apr 18. doi: 10.1111/ocr.12660. PMID: 37073503.
The study investigated differential gene expression between murine right and left maxilla-mandibular (MxMn) complexes. Using these right and left MxMn complexes from murine embryos, the researchers found 19 upregulated and 19 downregulated transcripts at E14.5 and 8 upregulated and 17 downregulated transcripts at E18.5 time-points. These differentially expressed transcripts were statistically significant and shown to be associated with craniofacial phenotypes in mouse models. These transcripts also have significant gnomAD constraint scores and are enriched in biological processes critical for embryogenesis. These findings, when extrapolated to humans, may provide a biological basis for facial asymmetry. Further experiments are required to validate these findings in murine models with craniofacial asymmetry. | | | Hawkeye History: International Education at the College of Dentistry With the Advanced Standing Program's orientation for new students this past week, it is nice to reflect on the history of international education at the college. Over a several year period in the 1910s, the University of Iowa College of Dentistry had numerous international students from all over the world come to Iowa to be educated, including Rogue Ledesma Justiniani from the Philippines (1913), Acisol Bravo Guevera from Puerto Rico (1913), Nobuji Fukushima from Japan (1914), and Rafidin Ahmed from India (1915). During these years, the college appears to have made a concerted effort to bring international students to Iowa, and in the University of Iowa alumni magazines from that era, representatives from the college regularly commented on the students being educated at Iowa and returning to their home countries to practice dentistry. The practice of recruiting and matriculating international students appeared to continue until at least 1917, but it is unclear what prompted this early commitment to international education or why it stopped. Nevertheless, the Advanced Standing Program builds on this legacy. | | Events
April 25, Noon Seminar: Luiz Meirelles, Ohio State University, “Precision Dental Medicine for Improved Periodontal Diagnostics Using Intra-Oral Scans,” hosted by Thiago Soares Porto, N212, 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
April 28, Noon Seminar: Nick Jakubovics, Newcastle University, United Kingdom, "From oral health to the written word: an editor’s perspective on dental research," hosted by Sukirth Ganesan, Galagan B, 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
May 2, Noon Seminar: Ashraf Ayoub, Glasgow University, UK, The genetic basis of the dento-facial phenotypes, hosted by Azeez Butali, Galagan B, 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
May 5, Dental Alumni Reception in conjunction with IDA Annual Meeting, Cedar Rapids, IA, 4:00 p.m.–6:00 p.m.
May 5, Noma—a global oral health disease, Fidel Strub, Galagan B and Zoom, (CE for students only; meets cultural competency requirement) 12:00 p.m.–1:00 p.m.
June 1, Culturally Responsive Health Care Conference, College of Public Health, 8:00 a.m.–1:00 pm. Co-sponsored by the College of Dentistry.
September 15-16, Dentistry Alumni Reunion Weekend
October 13-14, IMOM, Cedar Rapids Convention Center
Notes and Resources
Lend a helping hand. Due to medical issues, Holly Bolt has exhausted her sick leave and vacation. If you would like to help Holly by contributing vacation time, please go to the following website: CAT Leave, and click on “Catastrophic Leave Donation Form.”
M-R: 7:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m.; F: 7:30 a.m.–3:00 p.m.
The banner Hawkeye Smile image shows Shaoping Zhang, an assistant professor in periodontics, with Herky. | | | |
