The University of Iowa College of Dentistry is pleased to announce the 2024 Seed Grant Awards. 

This is the fourth year of the seed grant program, and these grants fund innovative projects from early-career investigators or established investigators who are developing a new line of research. The goal of these grants is to encourage research and generate data that will enable the awardees to be competitive for peer-reviewed national funding agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health.

Since 2020, Seed Grant awardees have secured $9,471,347 of external research funding, with an additional $16,437,937 of external grant proposals under review. Furthermore, seven new NIH grant proposals (3 R01s,  1 R21, and 3 R03s) are to be submitted in the spring of 2024. The seed grant awardees and applicants have become a major driving force of the collegiate research enterprise.

“The seed grant program has been extremely successful at setting up our researchers to develop competitive projects for external grant funding,” said Associate Dean for Research Jin Xie, “and this is due to the excellence of our researchers and their collaborative efforts."

The four projects selected this year are sure to continue this trend.

Xie also expressed his appreciation toward the College's Research Proposal Advisory Panel, for their time and effort on the seed grant program:

Jeffrey A. Banas, PhD (Chair), Professor, Pediatric Dentistry, IIOHR Director, Oral Science Graduate Program Director
Azeez Butali, BDS, PhD, Professor of Oral Pathology, Radiology and Medicine
Peter C. Damiano, DDS, MPH, Bernstein Professor, Preventive & Community Dentistry
Liu Hong, MD, MS, PhD, Professor of Prosthodontics
Kyungsup Shin, DMD, PhD, Associate Professor, Orthodontics, Director of Clinical Research
Erica C. Teixeira, DDS, PhD, Associate Professor and Chair, Operative Dentistry
George J. Weiner, MD, C.E. Block Chair Professor, Holden Comprehensive Cancer Center

Each 2024 Seed Grant proposal was reviewed and evaluated by the College of Dentistry Research Proposal Advisory Panel (RPAP), and award amounts for the proposals were based on the panel’s review and scoring of the proposals, the requested budget, and the available funds.

Based on these criteria, the 2024 Seed Grant Awards are: