Faculty

A paper published in the January 17, 2022 online edition of the Journal of Immunology focuses on saliva COVID-19 antibody testing. The paper, "The Kinetics of COVID-19 Vaccine Response in a Community-Vaccinated Population," was selected as an Editor’s Choice. Authors include Michael K. Tu, Samantha H. Chiang, Richard A. Bender, David T. W. Wong and Charles M. Strom.

With a combined 80-year history at the School, you can imagine all of the challenges and changes seen by Dr. Carol Bibb and Ms. Francesca Moore over the decades. Two very different chance encounters led to their lifelong and fulfilling careers.

Dr. No-Hee Park, dean emeritus of the UCLA School of Dentistry and distinguished professor of medicine at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, has been given the Irwin D. Mandel Distinguished Mentoring Award by the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research.

The UCLA School of Dentistry is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Sunil Kapila as Professor and Chair of Orthodontics, and Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Operations starting January 1, 2022. Dr. Kapila brings an impressive list of accomplishments in teaching, scholarship, patient care, service, and academic leadership. He obtained his dental degree at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, an MS in orthodontics at the University of Oklahoma as a Fulbright-Hayes Scholar, and a PhD in Oral Biology from UCSF.

Ten active faculty members from the UCLA School of Dentistry were identified as Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University in their world scientist rankings.They include Drs. David Wong, Cun-Yu Wang, Paul Krebsbach, Shane White, Kathryn Atchison, Francisco Ramos-Gomez, and Diana Messadi, as well as three faculty members from the Division of Advanced Prosthodontics and Weintraub Center: Drs. Ben Wu, Ichiro Nishimura, and Takahiro Ogawa.

It’s not uncommon for patients with special needs, complex medical conditions, and physical or cognitive differences, to encounter challenges when seeking dental care. The Special Patient Care (SPC) clinic at the UCLA School of Dentistry – and its specialists trained in treating this vulnerable population – serve as a major safety net for special needs patients and their caretakers. For many of these patients, UCLA is the only option they have and those who live far away are willing to drive hundreds of miles to be seen.

"YOU CAN’T CONNECT THE DOTS LOOKING FORWARD; YOU CAN ONLY CONNECT THEM LOOKING BACKWARDS. SO, YOU HAVE TO TRUST THAT THE DOTS WILL SOMEHOW connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.” 

CRANIOFACIAL SURGEON, DR. WAYNE OZAKI, MAY BE NEW TO THE UCLA SCHOOL OF DENTISTRY, but he’s been a UCLA Health surgeon and professor for almost a decade. In January, he joined the dental school as the new chair for oral and maxillofacial surgery and also became the chief of dental services for the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center. He brings with him a wealth of knowledge about the crossover between medical surgical services and dental services, and the dental school welcomes his outside perspective.

By identifying the underlying factors leading to bone loss and osteoporosis, UCLA dentist-scientists hope to pave the way to new treatments

Researchers from the UCLA School of Dentistry have identified the role a critical enzyme plays in skeletal aging and bone loss, putting them one step closer to understanding the complex biological mechanisms that lead to osteoporosis, the bone disease that afflicts some 200 million people worldwide.

Study to focus on using saliva in the analysis of cell-free circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) to accurately and non-invasively detect non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).