Michael Kanellis recently published Novocaine, a novel written by his late father, which adapted a story that Michael had developed.

Dr. Lina Moreno DDS PhD, associate professor in the University of Iowa, Department of Orthodontics, was named the Department Executive Officer of her department.

The US Department of Health and Human Services awarded Dr. Julie Reynolds, assistant professor in the Department of Preventive and Community Dentistry, almost $100K for her project, "Dental Coverage for Pregnant Women and Parents in Medicaid: Impact on Children's Access to Dental Care." The project investigates how Medicaid coverage for parents, which some states provide and some states do not, affects how much children and parents use dental services. Dr. Pete Damiano and Dr. Jin Xian are co-investigators for the project.

Dental students from Iowa received numerous awards at the 2021 IADR and AADOCR Annual Meeting.

The Delta Dental of Iowa Foundation awarded Dr. Leonardo Marchini a grant to support the final step in the development of a tool to measure the degree of ageism among dental students. The tool will be used to develop and evaluate specific strategies for addressing ageism among dental students with the goal of improving the oral health of older adults.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) awarded Cristina Vidal, assistant professor in the Department of Operative Dentistry, a 5-year grant totaling over $700K for her research project studying the relationship between caries and the oral microbiome.

The BigMouth Dental Data Repository is a comprehensive database of electronic health records provided by dental schools in a partially de-identified manner. Eleven major dental schools are currently participating with Iowa joining in 2020. This repository can be used for high-powered research using information collected from each of the participating institutions, and is a promising avenue for big data research.

In 2020, the University of Iowa was ranked 10th in the country for the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) funding, and 2nd in the Big 10, with over $6.4M in funds awarded.

Dr. Sukirth Ganesan, assistant professor in periodontics, and a team of researchers in the Carver College of Medicine were awarded a Carver Trust COVID-19 Pilot Collaborative Award. The grant, Unraveling the role of saliva in COVID- 19 pathogenesis using a comprehensive multi-omics approach, will involve a multi-arm, cross-sectional, case-control study with an integrated -omics approach to determine the microbial, metabolic, functional, and immune alterations in the saliva of COVID-19 patients.

Researchers at the University of Iowa College of Dentistry are working to make bone regeneration a reality through novel tissue engineering strategies and cutting-edge science. Hongli Sun is one of several faculty members at the college leading the charge to develop novel bone regeneration strategies for particular conditions and diseases.