Conferences
The past few months have seen the School of Clinical Dentistry being well represented by both its postgraduate students and academic staff.
Cher Farrugia, Areeg Elmusrati and Esra Amoura attended the BSODR Early Career Researchers Workshop 2019 on Research Methods and Critical Appraisal on 4th April at The University of Birmingham. Cher also attended the BSP Conference in Brighton which was held between 24th-26th April, at which she was awarded a BSP Research Grant (£3000) for further research on the link between periodontal disease and cardiovascular disease. Well done, Cher!
Katherine Ansbro presented a talk at the Microbiology Society Annual Conference (Belfast, 8-11th April) and received a Society Grant to fund this trip.
Members of both the Murdoch and Colley groups attended the 3DBioNet meeting in Sheffield on 6th June, where our serial prize winner Amy Harding added another award to her collection as she won second prize for her poster presentation. In addition, members of the Murdoch and Colley groups also attended the Tissue Cell Engineering Society and UK Society for Biomaterials (TCES/UKSB) conference in Nottingham where Bethany Ollington gave an excellent 15-minute presentation entitled, "Generation of an immuno-responsive tissue engineered oral mucosal equivalent containing primary human macrophages”. Jake Edmunds and Amy Harding also presented posters.
Once again, Cher Farrugia has been busy as she also attended an Integrated Bioimaging Network meeting in Leeds on 19th June and has given an oral presentation entitled, “In vitro and in vivo cleavage of endothelial cell adhesion molecules following periodontal pathogen infection” at the Florey Symposium in Sheffield on 28th June.
Our School was well represented at the International Association for Dental Research (IADR) meeting in Vancouver, Canada where Dr Keyvan Moharamzadeh was invited to give a symposium lecture. The title of his lecture was “Tissue-engineered oral mucosa combined with 3D-printed bone”. Areeg Elmusrati presented a talk entitled, “Senescent fibroblasts contribute to bone invasion in oral squamous cell carcinoma” at IADR and also chaired the 'Carcinogenesis in Head and Neck Tumors' session at the conference. Areeg was also invited to give a talk at the International Society of Extracellular Vesicles (ISEV) annual conference in Kyoto, Japan. The title of her talk was "Growing old disgracefully: a novel role of extracellular vesicles in bone invasion."
In June, Dr Joey Shephard attended the EWMA (European Wound management Association) 2019 conference in beautiful Gothenburg, Sweden to present her European collaborative work on therapeutic nanoparticles. It was a very large conference with a lot of industrial representation, and there was even a Viking ship built in the conference hall!
iBio journal club
On Monday afternoons during term time, the postgraduate students and academic staff in the iBio group meet for iBio journal club. These sessions consist of informal talks from both students and staff about their current research in the lab or an interesting research topic. We must congratulate the effort made by Ashley Gains and Alice Seleiro, as they had the highest attendance at journal club for the last academic year. Let’s see if they can keep this up next term!
Pint of Science
A mix of researchers from The School of Clinical Dentistry, including Dr Bob Turner from the iBio group, and The Department of Mechanical Engineering came together to explain advances in additive manufacturing using polymer materials and composites (mixtures of polymers and other stuff) at Sheffield's Triple Point Brewery for Pint of Science 2019.
“This was not only a great opportunity to engage the public with our research, but to engage each other with the latest developments in our fields and to speculate on future opportunities where research in one traditional discipline might benefit another” – Dr Bob Turner.
Bob has also shared a more detailed account of this event in a blog entitled, “Pint of Science, with an engineering chaser, and a bag of dry roasted health technology”, which can be found at the following link: mapp.ac.uk/views/pint-of-science-with-an-engineering-chaser-and-a-bag-of-dry-roasted-health-technology
Additional recognitions
Lisette Martin, one of our StRs in Oral & Maxillofacial Pathology has successfully passed her FRCPath exam. In addition, Areeg Elmusrati has received recognition as Fellow of Higher Education Academy (FHEA), for her work experience in teaching during her PhD. Congratulations, Lisette and Areeg.
Baby arrivals
These past few months have seen the arrival of 3 new babies! Firstly, we would like to congratulate Naeima Hendawi and her family on the arrival of a baby boy named Ibrahim in May. Ibrahim has already made his Dental School debut and he brought along a cake that was almost the same size as him!
We would also like to congratulate Sven Niklander and his family on the arrival of a beautiful baby girl named Sofia in June.
Finally, we would like to congratulate Asma El Howati and her husband Ahmed, who are both so happy and in love with their baby girl, named Habiba, who arrived in June. Asma spent the first 9 months of her PhD pregnant with Habiba and already considers her as a companion in her PhD journey.
Publications
Vu QD, Graham S, Kurc T, To MNN, Shaban M, Qaiser T, Koohbanani NA, Khurram SA, Kalpathy-Cramer J, Zhao T, Gupta R, Kwak JT, Rajpoot N, Saltz J, Farahani K. Methods for Segmentation and Classification of Digital Microscopy Tissue Images. Front Bioeng Biotechnol. 2019 Apr 2;7:53. doi: 10.3389/fbioe.2019.00053.
Extranodal extension in oral cancer: A role for the nodal microenvironment? Pilborough AE, Lambert DW, Khurram SA. J Oral Pathol Med. 2019 May 14. doi: 10.1111/jop.12870.
Swidergall M, Khalaji M, Norma VS, Moyes DL, Drummond RA, Hube B, Lionakis MS, Murdoch C, Filler SG, Naglik JR. (2019) Candidalysin is required for neutrophil recruitment and virulence during systemic Candida albicans infection. J. Infect Dis (in press).
Shepherd, Joanna, Swift, Thomas, Chang, Chien-Yi, Boyne, James R, Rimmer, Stephen, Martin, William. Highly Branched Poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide) Functionalized with an Inducer Molecule suppresses Quorum Sensing in Chromobacterium violaceum. Chemical Communications Accepted May 2019. MS no c9cc02524c
Kai Zheng, Preethi Balasubramanian, Thomas Paterson, Rene Stein, Sheila MacNeil, Sonia Fiorilli, Chiara Vitale-Brovarone, Joanna Shepherd, Aldo R. Boccaccini (2019). Ag modified mesoporous bioactive glass nanoparticles for enhanced antibacterial activity in 3D infected skin model. Materials Science and Engineering:C. Accepted May 2019, MS no. MSEC_2019_10_R2