SJWRI Research Day 2019, highlighting the research achievements of the University of Otago's Sir John Walsh Research Institute and Faculty of Dentistry, was held on Wednesday 11 September at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Now in its thirteenth year, the Institute's annual celebration of research excellence featured our staff and students presenting their work to peers, fellow researchers from across the University, industry professionals and dental practitioners.
SJWRI Research Day 2019 schedule
As in previous years, the opening session of Research Day spotlighted one of our areas of research strength as our featured research programme; this year our featured programme was Biomaterials, Biomechanics and Oral Implantology, led by Associate Professor Neil Waddell.
Our opening keynote was given by invited speaker Professor Patrick Schmidlin (pictured below), the head of the Division of Periodontology at the Center of Dental Medicine, University of Zurich, Switzerland. Professor Schmidlin's presentation, titled Posterior composite restorations – friend or foe? compared the use of amalgam versus composite resin materials for restorations of posterior teeth.
The programme for the day also featured a presentation from Dr Young-Chul Kwon, Asia-Pacific Scientific Affairs & Education Manager for our long-term supporters 3M Oral Care, on Revisiting caries and the development of preventive treatments.
Research Day presentation awards
Presentation awards were made to the best student oral presentations across the day, as well as the best poster competition entries. Congratulations to the following Research Day presentation award winners:
Student oral presentation awards
| Postgraduate winner |
Emma Morelli, DClinDent candidate (Periodontics) Is parity associated with periodontal attachment loss and other oral conditions? (E Morelli, JM Broadbent, ET Knight, JW Leichter, WM Thomson) |
|---|---|
| Postgraduate runner-up |
Yasmeen Ruma, PhD candidate Characterization of Cryptococcus neoformans lanosterol 14α-demethylase (YN Ruma, MV Keniya, JDA Tyndall (Pharmacy), BC Monk) |
| Undergraduate winner |
Helene Chua, BDS 3rd year & summer studentship recipient Cooling efficiency of different coolant port designs on high-speed handpieces (H Chua, JE Choi, JN Waddell) |
Poster presentation awards
| Winner |
Dina Abdelmoneim, PhD candidate Hydrogels as a 3D cell culture model to evaluate the cytotoxicity of metallic nanoparticles (D Abdelmoneim, GC Cotton, WJ Duncan, DE Coates) |
|---|---|
| Runner-up |
Golnoush Madani, PhD candidate Expression, purification, and negative staining of Candida albicans plasma membrane protein Cdr1 (G Madani, E Lamping, M Bostina, S Raunser, A Mitra, N Ha, RD Cannon) |
The SJWRI Awards for 2019 were also presented as part of the closing session.
Thanks to all who attended, and helped make this year's Research Day another resounding success.
SJWRI Research Day 2019 was made possible by the continued generous support of 3M Oral Care New Zealand.
Student oral presentation winner Emma Morelli with SJWRI Director, Prof Richard Cannon.
Research Day 2019 was enjoyed by a capacity audience of staff, postgraduates and final-year undergraduate students, as well as dental practitioners and industry professionals.
PhD student Dina Abdelmoneim was the winner of the Research Day poster competition.
Thanks to the Dunedin Public Art Gallery for once again hosting our Research Day.
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