College of Dentistry and Dental Clinics

Iowa Dentistry and the His Hands Clinic in Cedar Rapids, under dental director Jeff Akey ('87 DDS) began a new partnership this year offering clinical outreach experiences for second-, third-, and fourth-year dental students on select Saturday mornings.

The University of Iowa was one of four research institutions, along with Michigan, Duke, and Indiana, collaborating on a newly-funded National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR)/ National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant investigating the causes and implications of adolescent tooth decay, especially among underserved populations.

From our career-retired military dentists who spend the second half of their career teaching at Iowa to our veteran students, from our esteemed alumni who carry on the Iowa legacy throughout their military careers to our veteran patients who wouldn’t have access to dental care without our college, Iowa Dentistry is committed to those who have served in the United States armed forces.

Tim Nguyen, a T90 trainee in the Iowa Institute of Oral Health Research and a PhD student in the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Genetics, was awarded an F31 grant.

The college’s Clinical/Dental Education Research Initiative Support Program (CRISP) selected Joseph Curtis's pilot study assessing various modern methods of the design and fabrication of custom edentulous impression trays and record bases. This purpose of the study is update the third-year curriculum incorporating more modern, digital components into the denture design process.

On Thursday, April 27, Governor Kim Reynolds signed the Dentists and Dental Hygienists Licensure Compact bill into law.

The Class of 2026 was granted faculty-supervised clinical privileges on Thursday, April 27 at the 2023 White Coat Ceremony.

Hongli Sun, associate professor in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, was one of four Iowa faculty members to receive the 2023 Iowa Mid-Career Faculty Scholar Award. The award recognizes some of the most promising scholars at Iowa with three years of financial support for their research. Sun is a rising star in the field of biomaterials and tissue engineering, focusing on innovative strategies to improve bone tissue regeneration. 

The Academy of Osseointegration awarded I-Ching (Izzie) Wang, clinical assistant professor of periodontics, and Anvita Maharishi, assistant professor of family dentistry, a $30,000 translational and clinical science research grant for their project, Correlation Between Peri-implant Mucosa Color and Tissue Dynamics: Phenotype and Health Recognition Using Dental Ultrasonography.

A team of University of Iowa oral health researchers and dental providers at the Community Health Centers of Southeastern Iowa teamed up to deliver and assess the effectiveness of teledentistry in a nursing home setting.