News & Events

Dr. Marshall Padilla received his Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the College of William & Mary and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Currently, he is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Bioengineering Department in the Mitchell Lab as well as a member of the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry, where he recently finished a T90 fellowship. At the 2024 AADOCR Annual Meeting, he won the Postdoctoral Hatton Award Competition for his work on multitherapeutic lipid nanoparticles for oral squamous cell carcinoma.

Scientific expeditions into the oral cavity reveal how microbes shape health. To microbes, our mouth is an entire world unto itself — the gums, tongue, and teeth are habitats as distinct as the earth’s jungles, deserts, and Arctic. Bacteria, fungi, viruses, and other microorganisms that live in and on us — collectively known as our microbiome, or microbiota — inhabit nooks and crannies throughout the oral cavity, like animals and insects finding their homes in trees, sand dunes, and snow.

The Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD), Penn Dental Medicine’s joint center with Penn Engineering, is working to accelerate the development of oral health innovations through its growing number of awards, funding transdisciplinary research collaborations across the University.

With one of its key missions to develop a new generation of scientists at the interface of dental medicine and engineering, the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD) has selected a new class of fellows for its NIDCR T90/R90 Postdoctoral Training Program. This is the second group of trainees in the program, which was established in 2021 through a $2.5 million T90/R90 grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR).

Dr. Kyle Vining, Assistant Professor in Preventive and Restorative Sciences in Penn Dental Medicine and in Materials Science and Engineering in Penn Engineering, has received an Individual Biomedical Research Award from The Hartwell Foundation to explore a novel approach to improving treatment for childhood leukemia. Vining, a member of the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD), is among ten researchers representing eight institutions selected as a 2023 Hartwell Foundation awardee; Dr. Julia T. Warren of Penn Medicine is also an awardee.

The Mack Institute and Penn Dental’s Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD) kicked off a collaborative research project exploring potential uses of nanorobot technology for oral health care. The interdisciplinary partnership brings together three students from different Penn and Wharton programs to study the commercialization of a new technology that detects and removes harmful dental plaque.

For 75 years, NIDCR research has brought healthy smiles to children. What is the most common chronic disease in children? It’s tooth decay. Also known as cavities or caries, the condition is about five times more common than asthma and seven times more common than hay fever. Although tooth decay is preventable, it still affects nearly 46% of children in the U.S.

Dr. Dennis Sourvanos (GD23, DScD’23), an NIDCR postdoctoral trainee at Penn Dental Medicine, is the recipient of the American Dental Association (ADA) Foundation 2023 Crest and Oral-B Promising Researcher Award. This supports Dr. Sourvanos’ multidisciplinary, translational preclinical research, which has developed new investigative avenues in Photobiomodulation light therapy.

High-tech implant would fight gum infection to reduce implant failure rate. Penn Dental Medicine researcher Dr. Geelsu Hwang has received a large grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to support his development of advanced dental implant technology.

Penn Health-Tech, Penn’s hub for health technology innovation, announces the newest cohort taking part in its Health Tech Accelerator program.

Penn Dental Medicine postdoctoral trainee Dr. Dennis Sourvanos (GD’23, DScD’23) was recognized at the 2023 International Photodynamic Association World Congress in Tampere, Finland, receiving the “Photogenic Science Competition Award” for his submission related to ongoing research characterizing the optical properties of cortical bone.

Kyle Vining, with appointments in the School of Dental Medicine and the School of Engineering and Applied Science, discusses his unique dual career path and why we need more crosstalk between clinicians and researchers.

The American Peptide Society has selected César de la Fuente, Presidential Assistant Professor in Psychiatry, Microbiology, Bioengineering and in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, as the recipient of the prestigious 2023 Rao Makineni Lectureship Award.

A new, affordable method of insulin delivery developed by Henry Daniell of the School of Dental Medicine lowers the risk of hypoglycemia when compared to current diabetes treatments.

CiPD, Penn Dental Medicine’s collaborative center with Penn Engineering, has selected the latest recipients of the CiPD-Colgate Fellowship, naming Drs. Sunghee Lee and Zhenting Xiang to receive this multi-year support of their research and study. Funded by Colgate-Palmolive Company, the Fellowship provides financial support to students engaged in postdoctoral research studies at Penn Dental Medicine and Penn Engineering focused on childhood dental caries and novel anti-biofilm approaches to promote oral health.

A large study in children reveals Selenomonas sputigena as a key partner of Streptococcus in cavity formation.

Current 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 2nd Annual Symposium: Dentists, Scientists & Engineers Transforming Oral Health. The event was held June 1 at Penn’s Singh Center for Nanotechnology.

The Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD) and Penn Health-Tech have awarded their second annual IDEA (Innovation in Dental Medicine and Engineering to Advance Oral Health) Prize, a highly selective competition to support a dental and engineering collaboration to address unmet needs in oral and craniofacial health.

Members of the inaugural cohort of fellows in the Center for Innovation and Precision Dentistry (CiPD)’s NIDCR T90/R90 Postdoctoral Training Program have been recognized for their research activities.

Daeyeon Lee, Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has received the 2022 Outstanding Achievement Award in Nanoscience from the American Chemical Society (ACS).

César de la Fuente, a Presidential Assistant Professor of psychiatry and microbiology in the Perelman School of Medicine and of bio-engineering and in chemical and biomolecular engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, has been named an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) fellow. The only faculty member inducted this year from the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. de la Fuente is one of the youngest members ever to have been selected as an AIMBE fellow.

Penn Dental Medicine’s Dr. Henry Daniell, W.D. Miller Professor in the Department of Basic and Translational Sciences, was among ten game changers invited to present at the TEDxPenn conference, held Saturday, April 1.

Penn Dental Medicine students and faculty turned the spotlight on the School’s research activities as part of the 2023 American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research/Canadian Association for Dental Research Annual Meeting & Exhibition, recently held in Portland, Oregon.

Clusters of bacteria and fungi seem to be capable of complex movement, setting tooth decay in motion. Most of us would rather not think about the cavity-causing microbes infesting our mouths. They coat our teeth, eat the same sugars we do and excrete acids that carve holes in our enamel. And the complete picture is even grosser. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA shows that conglomerations of fungi and bacteria can work together to “walk” and “leap” across the surface of teeth, spreading decay much faster than either organism alone.

Penn Dental Medicine faculty members were recognized for their research and innovation as part of the Penn Center for Innovation’s (PCI) 7th annual Celebration of Innovation. This annual event celebrates Penn researchers and innovators who were named as inventors on patents issued to Penn this past fiscal year and highlights significant commercialization achievements. The celebration was held December 6 at the Singh Center for Nanotechnology. Those Penn Dental Medicine faculty issued patents in FY22 included CiPD’s Dr. Henry Daniell, Vice Chair and W.D. Miller Professor, Dept. of Basic & Translational Sciences and Dr. Michel Koo, Professor, Dept. of Orthodontics and Divs. of Pediatrics and Community Oral Health.

Dr. Zhi Ren, a current NIDCR R90 postdoctoral trainee within the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD) – Penn Dental Medicine’s collaborative center with Penn Engineering — was awarded the 2022 American Society for Microbiology (ASM)’s Early Career Symposium (ECS) Best Presentation Award.

Dr. Michel Koo, Penn Dental Medicine Professor, Department of Orthodontics, Division of Community Oral Health, Division of Pediatric Dentistry and Co-Founding Director of the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD), has been recognized for the scope and depth of his research — named on the Highly Cited Researchers™ 2022 list from Clarivate in the microbiology category.

Penn Dental Medicine postdoctoral student Dr. Dennis Sourvanos, (GD’23, DScD’23) was awarded the 2022 American Society for Photobiology (ASP) Frederick Urbach Student Travel Award, enabling him to present his research at the ASP Biennial Meeting, held in Albuquerque, NM, this fall.

Current interventions are limited in their ability to stimulate regeneration and functional recovery of severe injuries, lending to the need for better treatment options. It is known that Schwann cells and macrophages in the local injury microenvironment play critical roles in nerve repair and regeneration following injury, so one promising treatment strategy may focus on a means to manipulate the plastic phenotype of the macrophage into the pro-regenerative (M2) phenotype and away from the pro-inflammatory (M1) phenotype.

This creeping creature did not walk out of a sci-fi film—it actually plays a starring role in the mouth. It’s composed of cavity-causing bacteria (green) that piggyback on fungi (blue), forming superorganisms with unusual powers—“walking” and “lunging” on tooth-like surfaces.

Michel Koo, Co-Director and Co-Founder of CiPD, is featured in the episode of the Trailblazers with Walter Isaacson Podcast, “Dentistry: An Oral History of Disruption.” Now, researchers, engineers, and business founders are developing new forms of dental treatments and tools to make quality dental care more accessible and affordable and even create truly regenerative and preventative solutions. Hear all about these innovations on this toothsome episode of Trailblazers.

Michael Mitchell, J. Peter and Geri Skirkanich Assistant Professor of Innovation in the Department of Bioengineering, is one of this year’s recipients of the National Science Foundation’s CAREER Award.

Michel Koo and postdoctoral fellow Zhi Ren from the School of Dental Medicine and colleagues found that the bacteria and fungi responsible for a severe form of childhood tooth decay together form “superorganisms” with unexpected properties. The cross-kingdom groupings were more resistant to antimicrobials and physical removal than either species alone, sprouting “limbs” to move as a group and spread rapidly on teeth.

Dr. Marshall Padilla, a current NIDCR T90 postdoctoral fellow within CiPD has been selected to be part of the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research’s Mentoring an Inclusive Network for a Diverse Workforce of the Future program.

Penn Medicine will conduct a new clinical trial to evaluate the safety and efficacy of a chewing gum designed by School of Dental Medicine researchers to trap SARS-CoV-2 in the saliva.

A study led by Shuying (Sheri) Yang of the School of Dental Medicine identified a new role for a protein that keeps osteoclasts—the cells that break down bone—in check, and may guide the development of new therapies to counter bone loss.

Adding to the depth of research at the dental medicine and engineering interface, Penn Dental Medicine welcomes recent recruit Dr. Kyle Vining, who joined Penn Dental Medicine and its Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD) on July 1.

In a proof-of-concept study, researchers from Penn Dental Medicine and its Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD), have shown that microrobots can access the difficult to reach surfaces of the root canal with controlled precision, treating and disrupting biofilms and even retrieving samples for diagnostics, enabling a more personalized treatment plan.

In a proof-of-concept study, researchers from the School of Dental Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Science shows that a hands-free system could effectively automate the treatment and removal of tooth-decay-causing bacteria and dental plaque.

This inaugural symposium, held June 2, brought together dentists, scientists, and engineers to share their work and identify new opportunities to advance oral health innovation at the intersection of dental medicine and engineering.

With one of its key missions to develop a new generation of scientists at the interface of dental medicine and engineering, the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry (CiPD) has selected its inaugural class of fellows for its new postdoctoral training program.

Dr. Michel Koo, co-director of the CiPD, will be the featured speaker April 5, 2022, noon-1 pm, in this virtual lecture. Learn more and register.

Behind Biotech Podcast talks with Dr. Michel Koo on innovation in oral health.

Chewing gum could be a new tool to block the spread of COVID-19. Dr. Henry Daniell from Penn Dental Medicine tells HealthCall’s Lee Kelso how his lab has infused chewing gum with a plant-based enzyme that acts like flypaper to trap the virus, plus block the receptor so it can’t enter your body.

In experiments using saliva samples from COVID-19 patients, the gum, which contains the ACE2 protein, neutralized the virus.

Overview of attention for article published in Molecular Therapy.

The Center’s first IDEA Prize was awarded to Dr. Henry Daniell at Penn Dental Medicine, and his collaborator, Dr. Daeyon Lee, at Penn Engineering.

With a new training grant, awards, and new faculty and publications, the Center for Innovation & Precision Dentistry is leveraging technological advancements to improve oral health.

The inaugural Advancing Oral & Craniofacial Health Award was awarded to Penn Dental Medicine’s Dr. Eugene Ko for a project titled “Baby Seal: Promoting Intrinsic Sucking in Cleft Palate Infant Bottle Feeding.” Dr. Ko is collaborating with Dr. Shu Yang at Penn Engineering.

Two new research grant programs have been launched in partnership with the CiPD to help advance innovative breakthroughs in dental medicine, with Penn Health-Tech and the Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation.

The official launch of the CiPD brought together partners across Penn and invited guests to share the goals and vision of this unique collaboration.

A productive collaboration between the School of Dental Medicine and School of Engineering and Applied Science led to the microbe-killing robots for biofilm elimination.

Myriad industrial processes rely on enzymes, from making orange juice to manufacturing denim jeans. Research emerging from the School of Dental Medicine is transforming how these enzymes get made