The International/American Association of Dental Research Conference

By: Rana Abdelsalam, Honors College Senior

I attended the International/American Association on Dental Research (IAADR) conference the weekend of March 13^th in Boston, MA. This was my third time attending this conference. Every year it is in a different city around the country. The purpose of the conference is to increase dental knowledge in order to improve oral health. The conference is well attended by dental professors, dental students and dental product representatives from around the world, most of which are there to present their research.

I have been working on my research with Dr. Waldemar de Rijk, Clinical Associate Professor at ECU School of Dental Medicine, since my freshman year. Our research started out with making dental composite specimen and testing their material strengths. It then turned into modeling these specimens via an engineering modeling software, SolidWorks (SW), and applying finite element analysis. The research I presented this year was branched off of my previous work. We tired to import an STL file of a three unit dental bridge into SW in order to do finite element analysis.

Presenting at this conference for three years in a row has been a huge blessing for me. I received so much support and funding from the Engineering and Undergraduate Research Department. I have grown so much as a person and as a presenter. I have had the opportunity to interact with dentists and meet some of the brightest dental professors around. It taught me a lot about dentistry and its really cool to see how dental research evolves every year. I know for a fact that dental school is where I want to be, and I can’t wait to attend this conference again in the future as a dental student.