Dentsply Sirona and AADOCR Announce 2023 SCADA Award Winners

US: The winners of this year’s Student Competition for Advancing Dental Research and its Application (SCADA) awards, co-sponsored by Dentsply Sirona and the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (AADOCR), have been announced. 

The awards recognize outstanding research skills and projects among dental students, with categories for Clinical Science & Public Health Research and Basic & Translational Science. Each of the first, second, and third-place winning projects receives a cash prize of $1000, $750, and $500, respectively. 

Clinical Science & Public Health Research Category

1st: Jay Dalal from the University of Connecticut, School of Dental Medicine took the first-place award for his project on “The Effectiveness of Current Desensitizing Agents at Hypersensitivity Prevention.” 

2nd: Julia Kishanie Persaud from New York University, College of Dentistry was awarded second place for her work on “The Impact of Electronic Cigarette Use on the Salivary Microbiome in Periodontitis Patients,” 

3rd: Mackenzie Andrews from Midwestern University came in third place for her research on “Does Mouthguard Lamination Technique affect Hockey and Baseball Impact Force?”

Basic & Translational Science Category

1st: Natalie Andras from The Ohio State University, College of Dentistry won first place for her project “Gene-Editing Provides Functional Evidence for the Ectomesenchymal Origin of Cementoblasts.” 

2nd: W. Benton Swanson from the University of Michigan took second place for his work on “Scaffold-based Approach to Regenerating the Cranial Structure Stem Cell Niche,” 

3rd: Damell Cuylear from the University of California, San Francisco was awarded third place for her research on “Calcium Phosphate Microparticles for Dual Anti-resorptive Drug Delivery and Osteogenesis.”

“Our vision at Dentsply Sirona is to transform dentistry and to improve oral health globally. This is just possible with science,” said Dr Rainer Seemann, Dentsply Sirona’s Vice President Global Clinical Research.

“What better way to help guide the future of the profession and oral health than to support science in its foundations…The student clinicians are the future of oral science, and we are committed to investing into this future by running the SCADA program in the last 64 years.”