15th Annual Student Research Showcase highlights findings

Predoctoral and postdoctoral students presented findings to the UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry community during the 15th Annual Student Research Showcase in late October.

Held Oct. 28 in the Denton A. Cooley and Ralph C. Cooley, DDS University Life Center, the event featured 60 posters presented by dental and postgraduate students based on respective findings from the 2025 Summer Research Program. Postgraduate students, research fellows, and research assistants also competed.

Additionally, the six best-submitted abstracts were selected for oral presentations, competing for the top honor of the John M. Powers Student Research Day Award.

Wenyuan Shi, PhD, chief executive officer of the ADA Forsyth Institute, delivered the 2025 William T. Butler Distinguished Lecture, titled “Be Part of the Innovation Driving Force to Shape the Future of Dentistry.”

Shi discussed the role that research and innovation have played historically in the field of dentistry and the sciences at large. He touched on a couple of disruptive events created by innovation, including antibiotics, vaccinations, and laser eye surgery.

Not a dentist himself, Shi encouraged the audience that anyone can innovate to be a part of the driving force for change in dentistry. Some of his predictive “future disruptive technology” in dentistry included transformations in the oral-brain connection, the oral-colon connection, and the link between periodontitis and heart disease.

A total of 33 faculty members served as mentors and co-mentors during the 2025 Summer Research Program.

The Student Research Showcase award winners are as follows:

• Best Abstract Award
  • Postgraduate: Andrea Molina, “Combination of Cytokines and Immune Checkpoint Blockade Enhances Immunotherapy Responses in Immune-Infiltrated Oral Cancers,” mentor: Simon Young, DDS, MD, PhD
  • Cancer and Craniofacial Biology: Amy Tran, fourth-year dental student, “Sp7 is essential for cartilage-to-bone transition in the mandibular condylar cartilage,” mentor: Noriaki Ono, DDS, PhD
  • Clinical Dentistry and Oral & Maxillofacial Radiology: Madison Ang, second-year dental student, “Association Between Temporomandibular Disorders and Otologic Symptoms: A Systematic Review,” mentor: Craig Pearl, BDS, MSD
  • Clinical Teaching, Dental Education, and Public Health: Camie McFarland, fourth-year dental student, “Assessing Dental Student Knowledge of Common and Important Soft Tissue Oral Lesions: A Diagnostic Accuracy Study,” mentor: Maria Elkins, DDS, MSD
  • Dental Materials and Digital Dentistry: Tai Van, third-year dental student, “The Future is Now: AI-Generated Esthetic Crown Designs,” mentor: Michelle Thompson, DDS
  • Tissue Engineering and Molecular Biology: Allan Hu, third-year dental student, “Quantification of Mechanosensitive Machinery of Osteocytes Using the IDG-SW3 Cell Line,” mentor: Danielle Wu, PhD
  • Translational Research in Oral Science: Katelyn Kennedy, third-year dental student, “3D Biomimetic Dental Implant Culture System to Assess Osteoblastic Activities,” mentor: Sahar Dowlatshahi, DDS, MMSc
• Best Poster Award
  • Postgraduate: Yuqing Han, “Epithelial-Fibroblast Co-Culture Hydrogel for Study of Salivary Vascularization and Innervation,” mentor: Cindy Farach-Carson, PhD
  • Cancer and Craniofacial Biology: Matthew Khuu, second-year dental student, “The pivotal role of Six2 (sine oculis related homeobox 2) in cranial base synchodrosis formation,” mentor: Noriaki Ono, DDS, PhD
  • Clinical Dentistry and Oral & Maxillofacial Radiology: Noor Karkoutly, second-year dental student, “How Data Shapes Discovery: Exploring Dental Caries Risk Using NHANES, Medicaid, and BigMouth Databases,” mentor: Bunmi Tokede, BDS, MPH, DMSc
  • Clinical Teaching, Dental Education, and Public Health: Yousef Hilal, second-year dental student, “Development of an ImmersiveTouch VR User Guide for Virtual Surgical Planning in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery,” mentor: Craig Pearl, BDS, MSD
  • Dental Materials and Digital Dentistry: Caitlyn Krebs, third-year dental student, “Comparison of Metrology Software in the Analysis of 3D-Printed Dental Models,” mentor: Kurtis Kasper, PhD
  • Tissue Engineering and Molecular Biology: Kay Lee, third-year dental student, “FRESH Bioprinting of Hydrogel Constructs Supports Cell Viability & Structural Fidelity,” mentor: Daniel Harrington, PhD
  • Translational Research in Oral Science: Hussam Rusam, second-year dental student, “Minimal Fluoride Content and Acidic pH in Popular Consumable Drinks,” mentor: Alan Myers, PharmD, PhD, RPh
• 2025 AADOCR Student Research Day Award: Tai Van, third-year dental student, “The Future is Now: AI-Generated Esthetic Crown Designs,” mentor: Michelle Thompson, DDS

Faculty judges for the poster presentations included Bhavini Acharya, BDS, MPH; Roger Arce, DDS, MPH, PhD; Chun-Yeh Chien, DDS, MSD; Abishai Dominic, PhD; Farnaz Dini, DDS; Safia Durab, BDS, BSc, MSc; Cristiane Fonteles, DDS, MS, PhD; Harold Henson, RDH, MEd, PhD; F. Kurtis Kasper, PhD; Erin Key, DDS; Erin Loggins, DDS; Yahuan Lou, PhD; Seiko Min, DDS, PhD, MS; Hamid Nurrohman, DDS, PhD; Kalu Ogbureke, BDS, DMSc, JD, DMD; Neha Parikh, PhD; Sudha Rajderkar, BDS, MS, PhD; Daher Antonio Queiroz, DDS, MS, PhD; Bunmi Tokede, BDS, MPH, DMSc; Michele White, DDS; and Bing-Yan Wang, DDS, MS, PhD.

Judges for the oral presentations included Jack Lee, PhD, MS, DDS, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (Department of Biostatistics); Shi; and Gregory Olson, DDS, MSc, of the School of Dentistry.

William T. Butler Distinguished Lectureship Fund

The William T. Butler Distinguished Lectureship Fund was established in 2018 to honor the legacy of Professor Emeritus William T. Butler, PhD, who served on the faculty at UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry from 1987 until his retirement in 2004. With over 245 publications, he achieved international acclaim as an expert in mineralized tissue. Butler made many contributions to our understanding of bone and dentin matrix proteins. He is widely known in the biomedical sciences community for his landmark publication on the structure of collagen, a description that still remains in biochemistry textbooks to this day, and the co-discoverer of the bone matrix protein, osteopontin.