Students attend 30th Annual Hinman Symposium
From left: Dental student Lourdes Dinh, Professor Christiane Fonteles, DDS, MS, PhD, and dental students Riya Pagilla and Fatemeh Ebrahimi at the 30th Annual Hinman Student Research Symposium.
First-year dental student Riya Pagilla of UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry received an honorable mention for her poster presentation at the 30th Annual Hinman Student Research Symposium in early November.
Pagilla was recognized for her outstanding oral presentation in the basic science research category. She presented “Establishing a Co-culture Assay to Investigate Mechanisms of MDSC-mediated Suppression of T-Cells in a Cold Oral Cancer Tumor Model.” Simon Young, DDS, MD, PhD, professor and interim chair for the Bernard and Gloria Pepper Katz Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, was her faculty mentor.
Also representing the School of Dentistry were dental students Lourdes Dinh, third year, and Fatemeh Ebrahimi, second year, along with Christiane Fonteles, DDS, MS, PhD, professor in the Department of Pediatric Dentistry.
The Hinman Student Research Symposium was held Oct. 31-Nov. 2 at the historic Peabody Hotel in downtown Memphis, Tennessee. The symposium featured oral and poster presentations of research projects by dental students and graduate trainees from dental schools across North America and Europe.
At the 2025 symposium, 90 students represented 50 dental schools in 29 states, the District of Columbia, four provinces of Canada, and one international student from Europe.
The symposium aims to help raise and maintain the quality of dental research and education in the U.S. by encouraging the participation of dental students, graduate trainees, and dental school faculty in research to improve oral health care globally.
Hosted by The University of Tennessee College of Dentistry, the annual symposium is co-sponsored by the Hinman Dental Society. Additional support was provided by Procter & Gamble, The University of Tennessee College of Dentistry Alumni Association, and the Tennessee Dental Association Foundation.