14th annual research showcase highlights student findings

Predoctoral and postdoctoral students presented findings to the UTHealth Houston School of Dentistry community during the 14th Annual Student Research Showcase in late October.

Held Oct. 29 in the Denton A. Cooley, MD and Ralph C. Cooley, DDS University Life Center, 62 posters were presented by dental and postgraduate students based on respective findings from the 2024 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.

The 2024 William T. Butler Distinguished Lecture was delivered by Jack Ferracane, PhD, founding fellow and past president of the Academy of Dental Materials and the American Association for Dental Research. His topic was “Bioactive Dental Restorative Materials — What Are They and What Role Can They Play in Bonded Dental Restorations?”

Ferracane discussed the need for new restorative material systems. He also expanded on the different views of bioactivity, from the narrow to the broad, and provided examples of how this interesting and important concept is being pursued in dentistry.

A total of 34 faculty members served as mentors and co-mentors during the 2024 Summer Research Program.

The Student Research Showcase award winners are as follows:

• Best Abstract Award:
  • Cancer and Craniofacial Biology: Amy Tran, third-year dental student, “Identification of Runx2+ stem cells in the mandibular condylar cartilage,” mentor: Noriaki Ono, DDS, PhD
  • Clinical Dentistry: John Mansour, second-year dental student, “Consequences of Extractions in the Vicinity of Gingival Cancers,” mentor: Jonathan Shum, DDS, MD
  • Clinical Teaching, Dental Education, and Oral & Maxillofacial Radiology: Camie McFarland, third-year dental student, “Perceptions of Artificial Intelligence Integration in Dental Education and Clinical Settings: A Survey Study,” co-mentors: Celine Sheng, DDS, MSD; Jennifer Chang, DDS, MSD; Sridhar Eswaran, DDS, MSD
  • Dental Materials: Tai Van, second-year dental student, “Comparing the Accuracy of 3D-Printed versus Milled Composite Inlays,” co-mentors: Michelle Thompson, DDS; Gary Frey, DDS; F. Kurtis Kasper, PhD
  • Tissue Engineering, Biomaterials and Applications in Dentistry: Julia Zheng, third-year dental student, “Interferon Regulatory Factor 6 (IRF6) Regulates Adherens Junction Proteins in Salivary Glands and is Associated with Inflammatory Cytokines in Sjogren’s Syndrome,” mentor: Walid Fakhouri, MSc, PhD
  • Translational Research in Dentistry: Noor Karkoutly, first-year dental student, “Effects of Resolvin-E1 on Primary Human Gingival-Fibroblast in Bioactive Hydrogels,” co-mentors: Chun-The Lee, DDS, DMSc, MS; and Danielle Wu, PhD
• Best Poster Award:
  • Cancer and Craniofacial Biology:
    • Arman Hassan, visiting student in the Young Laboratory, “Development of an Ex Vivo Assay for STING Agonist-Mediated Conventional Type 1 Dendritic Cell Activation,” mentor: Simon Young, DDS, MD, PhD
    • Vivian Tran, second-year dental student, “Identification of Six2 as a cranial base synchondrosis-specific marker,” mentor: Noriaki Ono, DDS, PhD
  • Clinical Dentistry: Madison Miller, fourth-year dental student, “Validating the Precision Periodontal Risk Assessment System,” mentor: Chun-The Lee, DDS, DMSc, MS
  • Clinical Teaching, Dental Education, and Oral & Maxillofacial Radiology: Jack Cherry, fourth-year dental student, “Comparing the Periodontal Defect Identifications of Two-Dimensional Radiographs to Three-Dimensional Radiographs,” mentor: Chun-The Lee, DDS, DMSc, MS
  • Dental Materials: Caitlyn Krebs, second-year dental student, “Evaluating the Effects of Layer Height and Software Setting Combinations on the Accuracy of 3D-Printed Dental Models,” mentor: F. Kurtis Kasper, PhD
  • Tissue Engineering, Biomaterials and Applications in Dentistry: Kuelye (Kay) Lee, second-year dental student, “Salivary Gland Tissue Engineering through 3D Bioprinting into Microparticle Support Baths,” mentor: Daniel Harrington, PhD
  • Translational Research in Dentistry: Umar Malik, third-year dental student, “Efficacy of Light Cured Obturation in vitro,” mentor: David Jaramillo, DDS
  • Postgraduates and Research Assistants: Gemalene Sunga, graduate research student at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center UTHealth Houston Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, “Comparative analysis of syngeneic oral cancer development at the murine heterotopic and orthotopic sites,” mentor: Simon Young, DDS, MD, PhD
  • Postdoctoral Research Fellows: Taishi Komori, DDS, PhD, research fellow in the Ono and Ono Laboratory, “Defining the identities and the origins of two distinct types of cementoblasts,” co-mentors: Noriaki Ono, DDS, PhD; and Wanida Ono, DDS, PhD
• John M. Powers Student Research Day Award: Tai Van, second-year dental student

Faculty judges for the poster presentations included Shawn Adibi, DDS, MEd; Chun-Yeh Chien, DDS, MSD; Sahar Dowlatshahi, DDS, MMSc; Walid Fakhouri, MSc, PhD; Daniel Harrington, PhD; Carolyn Huynh, DDS, EdD; David Jaramillo, DDS; Ji Wook Jeong, DMD, MSD; Yahuan Lou, PhD; Pooja Maney, BDS, MPH, PhD; Vuvi Nguyen, MS, PhD; Hamid Nurrohman, DDS, PhD; Ngozi Nwizu, BDS, MMSc, PhD; Noriaki Ono, DDS, PhD; Wanida Ono, DDS, DMSc, PhD; Neha Parikh, PhD; Daher Queiroz, DDS, MS, PhD; Ritu Tiwari, BDS, MDS, Cert.; Bing-Yan Wang, DDS, MS, PhD; Michele White, DDS; Danielle Wu, PhD; and Xiaolei Zhao, PhD.

Judges for the oral presentations included Heidi Kaplan, PhD, of McGovern Medical School at UTHealth Houston (Microbiology and Molecular Genetics); Ferracane; and Oluwabunmi Tokede, BDS, MPH, 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.