Colgate names CARE grant recipients

Colgate has announced the winners of this year’s recipients of the Colgate Award for Research Excellence (CARE). The CARE program is designed to recognize a new generation of academic researchers by providing up to $30,000 per project to support oral health research projects across multiple disciplines.

The five junior faculty members chosen for 2020 are:

• Amy Killeen, DDS, MS – University of Nebraska Medical Center, College of Dentistry, “The effect of local cannabidiol on clinical and inflammatory outcomes in periodontal maintenance patients”
   

• Danielle Wu, PhD – The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, “Salivary Avatars for Screening Stimulants and Sialogogues”
   

• Robert Shields, PhD – University of Florida, College of Dentistry, “Development of new anti-caries therapeutics using a CRISPR interference platform”
   

• Rosalyn Sulyanto, DMD, MS – Boston Children’s Hospital, affiliated with Harvard Medical School, “The Oral Microbiota of Children Treated with the ECC Chronic Disease Management Protocol”
   

• Shaoping Zhang, DDS, MS, PhD – University of Iowa, College of Dentistry, “Identifying Signature Inflammatory Mediators In Gingival Crevicular Fluid in Periodontal Profile Class-stages”

Proposals were reviewed by a group of independent senior academic dental researchers. The winners were selected based on program criteria, which included innovation, clinical significance, originality, and scientific quality. CARE grants are typically offered for a period of 12 months.

“The CARE Program fosters the development of junior faculty by providing seed research funding to emerging leaders in academia at a time in their career path when it is most needed,” said Maria Ryan, vice president and chief dental officer, Global Technology at Colgate. “Every year, we look forward to meeting and supporting talented researchers in the early stages of their careers. We are pleased to fund innovative projects that promise to advance industry knowledge and perhaps even revolutionize the field of dentistry. On behalf of Colgate, sincere congratulations to the winners of this year’s grant awards.”

The CARE program was established in 2016 to foster and provide financial support to young academic researchers. To be eligible for the Colgate CARE grant, faculty applicants must be in the first five years of an academic appointment.

For more information about the program and for application guidelines, visit colgateprofessional.com/care-program (U.S.) or colgateprofessional.ca/en/care-program (Canada).