Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry Symposium Highlights Cutting-Edge Research
Philadelphia – Cutting-edge research at the interface of dental medicine and engineering was in the spotlight as the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD), the collaborative center between Penn Dental Medicine and Penn Engineering, presented its 3nd Annual Symposium: Dentists, Scientists & Engineers Transforming Oral Health. The event was held May 30 at Penn Dental Medicine with more than 171 participants.
“There is so much innovative work being done across disciplines by faculty and trainees alike to address the unmet needs in oral-craniofacial health using engineering approaches,” says Dr. Hyun (Michel) Koo and Dr. Kate Stebe, Co-Founding Directors of the CiPD and Professor in the Department of Orthodontics and Divisions of Pediatrics and Community Oral Health.
The daylong symposium featured presentations and research posters by CiPD faculty and trainees in the Center’s NIDCR T90/R90 Postdoctoral Training Program in addition to invited speakers. The guest speakers included Dr. Lawrence Tabak, National Institutes of Health Principal Deputy Director; Dr. Marylyn Ritchie, Vice Dean of Artificial Intelligence and Computing at Penn’s School of Medicine; and Dr. Federico Mingozzi, CEO of Stealth Biotech, who discussed challenges and opportunities in health science innovations, translational bioinformatics, and entrepreneurship in biomedicine, respectively.
The poster session featured 36 poster presentations on the research of CiPD faculty and trainees, including guests from other institutions including University of Pittsburgh, Temple University and SUNY at Albany. Six awards were presented for outstanding projects, which included: Hong-Huy Tran (Penn Dental Medicine), Jong Bin Kim and Tiffany Chui (Penn Engineering), Sharvari Kemkar (Penn Engineering), Malihatosadat Gholam Zadeh (Penn Dental Medicine), Emmanuel Adade (SUNY at Albany), Yuchen Jiang (Penn Engineering).
As part of the program, recipients of the 2024 CiPD/Penn Health-Tech IDEA (Innovation in Dental Medicine and Engineering to Advance Oral Health) Prize and the inaugural CiPD-IBI AI in Oral Health Innovation Award were recognized. In addition, a new funding award – the RESTORE Prize — was announced. It will support investigators studying novel ideas using regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, and computational approaches; the first RESTORE Prize will be awarded in the fall.