COMING UP

Indiana University School of Dentistry
Calendar of Events

February 2004

National Children's Dental Health Month

Recognition Month
for IUSD Administrative Staff

MUNCHING PIZZA, BIDDING AT AN AUCTION, AND OPENING YOUR CHECKBOOK -- WHAT DO THESE ACTS HAVE IN COMMON? Each represents a way for you to support the students who are volunteering their services as oral healthcare providers in Haiti and rural Mexico by way of the 2004 IUSD Alternative Spring Break program.

You can buy a pizza lunch every Thursday for several weeks running. You can participate in a silent auction at a festive fund-raiser on Feb. 5. And a cash donation is welcome anytime.

Please do whatever you can to help support this important service-learning program, which relies on grants and donations for funding. Checks of any size will be most appreciated. Donations are tax-deductible (Indiana gives a tax credit) -- write a check to the IU Foundation (with the memo "Service Learning Account 38-D008-54-6") and give it to Pamela Lovejoy in the Office of Development, DS110.

Volunteering their services in Haiti this year are second-year dental hygiene student Joya Wade; third-year dental students Daniel Delisle, Ellen Delisle, Jaime Steele, and Benjamin Weege; fourth-year dental students Carolyn Demas, Mandy Greenlee, Suzan Harris, and Katie Rusnak; and VA Hospital resident Dr. Trevor Kaple. Mentors are Dr. Timothy Carlson, professor of operative dentistry; Dr. Samuel Campbell Jr., clinical associate professor of oral and maxillofacial surgery; and Dr. Carlson's wife, Ann Carlson.

Those treating patients in rural Mexico are second-year dental hygiene students Deborah Scott and Ney Zavala; third-year dental students Jacob Froerer, Tamara Gierke, Brett Miller, and Julie Schuster; fourth-year dental students Caroline Derrow, Jeremy Sorhus, and Bradley Swanson; and pediatric dentistry resident Dr. Sean Cook. Faculty mentors are Dr. Angeles Martinez-Mier, assistant professor of preventive and community dentistry; Dr. Daniel Gomes, associate instructor in the Department of Periodontics and Allied Dental Programs; and Dr. Karen Yoder, director of the Division of Community Dentistry.

IT'S FEBRUARY -- TIME TO STOP AND SMELL THE CARNATIONS. The IUSD Staff Council is once again sponsoring its ever-popular Valentine's Day sale of carnations featuring gorgeous petals in red, pink, or white. These 21^st century beauties can still be yours for 20^th century prices too. Each flower is only a dollar, and bud vases are also available for $2. If you're planning to buy five or more flowers, you can preorder with Margie Ellison at maelliso@iupui.edu beginning today through Wed., Feb. 11. Be sure to provide Margie with your name as well as the number and color of flowers you want. Distribution days are the 12^th and 13^th.

FACULTY ANNUAL SUMMARY REPORTS for both full- and part-time faculty are due today. Submit one copy of the FASR and your current C.V. to your department chair and two copies of each of these documents to the Office of Academic Affairs, DS102.

DOES YOUR LAST NAME BEGIN WITH THE LETTER M, N, O, or P? If so, it's time to have your IUSD portrait taken (or updated, if you already have a photo on file). Full- and part-time faculty and staff members should come to Dental Illustrations (room B14) anytime from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. this week to have their pictures taken. No appointment needed.

IUPUI FACULTY COUNCIL, 3:30-5:30 p.m. in IH 100

Support the Alternative Spring Break trips to Haiti and Mexico by buying a PIZZA LUNCH for $5 in the basement, beginning 11:30 a.m.

The signing of an AFFILIATION AGREEMENT will be celebrated tonight at a fund-raiser for the Calnali (Mexico) Service-Learning Program, now in its fifth year. (Dental school students and faculty have been volunteering for this annual healthcare mission through the IUSD Alternative Spring Break program since 2001.) Those signing the agreement are representatives from the IU Schools of Dentistry, Medicine, and Nursing; La Universidad de Hidalgo; and the Municipio de Calnali. The buffet dinner, entertainment, and silent auction are being held at El Sol de Tala restaurant, beginning 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $20, and attire is casual. All faculty, staff, and students are invited. For more details or to purchase tickets, contact Janet Shultz (278-3411; jlshultz@iupui.edu).

Second annual GIVE KIDS A SMILE program brings community dentists to the dental school's clinics today to join our students and faculty in providing dental treatment to low-income children. Sponsored by the American Dental Association and locally by the Indiana Dental Association, this program is taking place in dental offices, dental schools, and community clinics throughout the nation as a follow-up to last year's highly successful event, which provided free treatment to an estimated one million children in need. Dr. George Willis, associate dean for Clinical Affairs, is overseeing activities at the IUSD treatment site.

SUBMISSION DEADLINE for Research Day table clinic and poster abstracts. Registration materials are located at the INAADR link (Indiana Section of the American Association for Dental Research) on the Intranet's Explorer Launchpad. To register, you must send three items to Susan Crum: 1) an electronic copy of your abstract (prepared as a Microsoft Word document), sent either as an e-mail attachment (the preferred method) or on a disk or CD; 2) a hard copy of your research abstract, which has been carefully proofread by you (watch out for symbol conversion problems); and 3) the registration form, which you can download from the INAADR Website or pick up from the Dean's Office, Library, or Oral Health Research Institute. Registration forms from staff and students must bear the signature of their faculty mentor. Susan's campus mail address is Publications DS B32, and her e-mail is smcrum@iupui.edu.

CE course PROPER USE OF CERAMIC RESINS CAN COMPETE WITH CERAMICS, a lecture and workshop by Dr. James Dunn, associate professor of restorative dentistry, Loma Linda University. Call 278-9000 for details.

CE course RADIOLOGY FOR DENTAL PERSONNEL (laboratory), by Gail Williamson, professor of dental diagnostic sciences. Call 278-9000 for details.

FEAST DAY OF ST. APOLLONIA, Patroness of Dentistry

DOES YOUR LAST NAME BEGIN WITH THE LETTER Q, R, or S? Time to have your IUSD portrait taken or updated. Full- and part-time faculty and staff members should come to Dental Illustrations (room B14) anytime from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. this week to have their pictures taken. No appointment needed.

SUPERVISOR FOCUS GROUP discussion, led by Dan Griffith, an IU human resources training manager; 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. in DS S421. Anyone with supervisory responsibilities is invited to participate. No preregistration necessary.

LAST DAY TO PREORDER Valentine carnations. Get your order to Margie Ellison at maelliso@iupui.edu.

Support the Alternative Spring Break trips to Haiti and Mexico by buying a PIZZA LUNCH for $5 in the basement, beginning 11:30 a.m.

STAFF COUNCIL'S ANNUAL VALENTINE'S DAY FLOWER SALE commences this afternoon (preorder distribution and general sales), 2:30-4 p.m. in the school's main lobby.

Forget to buy some carnations yesterday? Or did you not buy enough? Or did Cupid's arrow target you overnight and you are now seeking a bushel of flowers to bestow upon your newfound love? Well, you're in luck. For the first time in its history, the Staff Council's annual VALENTINE'S DAY FLOWER SALE is running a second day. Bring your dollars this morning to the main lobby, where distribution of carnations will continue through the lunch hour, as supplies last.

CE course SPORTS DENTISTRY IS NOW MORE THAN JUST A HOBBY, by Drs. Richard Shelly and Kenneth Moore, who both have served as dentist to IU's Department of Athletics. Call 278-9000 for details.

Seminar, Indiana Section of the AADR: FROM TRIALS TO TRIBULATIONS: RESEARCH IN CENTRAL AMERICA STIMULATES EVOLUTION OF ETHICAL THINKING, by Dr. Michael Kowolik, professor of periodontics; noon-1 p.m. in DS S116. Everyone welcome.

OSHA AND INFECTION CONTROL, a course sponsored by the Indianapolis District Dental Society and taught by part-time faculty member Dr. Mark Mallatt, who is also director of Oral Health at the Indiana State Department of Health; 1:30-3:30 p.m. at Washington High School. The cost is $85 per dentist and $50 per staff member. In addition to earning three CE credits, this course will also meet the IU dental school's requirement for faculty and staff to attend an annual update program on infection control and OSHA regulations. Your attendance will fulfill either your 2003 or 2004 requirement. For more details or to register, call 471-8131.

PROPOSAL SUBMISSION DEADLINE for Student Research Subcommittee's Feb. 27^th meeting

Join all the students, faculty, staff, and alumni who are "Young at Heart" at the annual School of Dentistry VALENTINE'S DINNER DANCE tonight at the Children's Museum, 7:30 p.m. to midnight. Tickets at $20 per person cover the cost of dinner and beverages. Tickets are now on sale daily just outside the school cafeteria from about 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.

DOES YOUR LAST NAME BEGIN WITH THE LETTER T, U, V, W, X, Y, or Z? Time to have your IUSD portrait taken or updated. Full- and part-time faculty and staff members should come to Dental Illustrations (room B14) anytime from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. this week to have their pictures taken. No appointment needed.

STUDENT AFFAIRS COUNCIL and DEAN'S STUDENT TOWN HALL, noon in DS114

AMERICAN EQUILIBRATION SOCIETY annual meeting, Chicago, Ill.

ACADEMY OF OPERATIVE DENTISTRY annual meeting, Chicago

Support the Alternative Spring Break trips to Haiti and Mexico by buying a PIZZA LUNCH for $5 in the basement, beginning 11:30 a.m.

AMERICAN PROSTHODONTIC SOCIETY annual meeting, Chicago

CHICAGO MIDWINTER MEETING, McCormick Place, 2301 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago

Today is Dental Illustrations' DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING MATERIALS FOR POSTERS to be presented at the upcoming International Association for Dental Research/AADR meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii. The division's services and supplies are free to those presenting posters at this meeting, but today's deadline must be observed. All materials must be in their final format and ready for mounting. Submit presentation titles as Word documents to mdirlam@iupui.edu. For more information about Dental Illustrations' poster services, contact Mark Dirlam, division supervisor.

RESEARCH COMMITTEE, 8 a.m. in DS S421

IUSD ALUMNI RECEPTION co-sponsored by Dean Lawrence Goldblatt, the IU School of Dentistry, and the IUSD Alumni Association, 5-6:30 p.m. in room E262 (East Building) of McCormick Place Complex, Chicago. Held in conjunction with the Chicago Midwinter Meeting. Everyone welcome. RSVP to Karen Deery, 274-8959.

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF FIXED PROSTHODONTICS annual scientific session, Chicago

AMERICAN ACADEMY OF RESTORATIVE DENTISTRY annual meeting, Chicago

STAFF TOWN HALL, noon in DS S116

Support the Alternative Spring Break trips to Haiti and Mexico by buying a PIZZA LUNCH for $5 in the basement, beginning 11:30 a.m.

STUDENT RESEARCH SUBCOMMITTEE, 8 a.m. in DS S421

CE course MAKING THE LATEST TECHNOLOGY WORK FOR YOU, by Dr. Barry Freydberg. Call 278-9000 for details.

FOUNDERS DAY CEREMONY, 11 a.m.-12:30 p.m. at Assembly Hall, Bloomington campus

DR. SRINIVASAN IS GRANT RECIPIENT. Dr. Mythily Srinivasan, assistant professor of oral pathology, recently was informed by the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation of America (CCFA) that she is the recipient of a grant from the foundation to fund a research study concerning the development of a novel therapeutic agent for inflammatory bowel disease. Titled "Structural and functional characterization of B7 competitive antagonist peptides as immunomodulatory agents in inflammatory bowel disease," the study has been funded in 2004 for about $69,000, with provisional funding of an additional $138,000 in 2005 and 2006.

Dr. Srinivasan joined the IUSD faculty in the Department of Oral Pathology, Medicine, and Radiology in 2002. In addition to contributing to the department's oral cancer research, she works as an independent researcher to develop projects in the fields of oral/mucosal immunology and chronic inflammation, including the study receiving the CCFA grant.

Considerable evidence suggests that activated T cells play a primary role in the disease pathology of most autoimmune diseases, such as Sjogren's syndrome, rheumatoid arthritis, and inflammatory bowel disease or colitis. Dr. Srinivasan is looking at two specific signals that activate the T cell -- one serves as the "on" switch, activating the body's immune response, and the other terminates the immune response by serving as the "off" switch. She has designed specific peptide agents with a goal in part of suppressing the immune response. "Experiments in our laboratory are under way to test whether these peptide agents can block disease in animal models of rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel disease," Dr. Srinivasan says.

IUSD EXPERTS ON TV, ON RADIO, IN PERSON, AND IN PRINT.

Dr. Stookey Makes TV Appearance. Last month, Dr. George Stookey, distinguished professor emeritus of preventive and community dentistry, was one of several researchers appearing on "Inside Indiana Business," a local television news hour hosted each week by Gerry Dick. The Jan. 4 program featured an hour-long special on the Indiana University Emerging Technologies Center (IUETC), a downtown incubator for start-up businesses in the life sciences, biotechnology, and bioinformatics. The IUETC's mission is to promote partnerships between IU and industry to foster economic growth and employment opportunities in the state. One of the IUETC tenant companies highlighted on the TV show was Therametric Technologies, Inc. (TTI), which Dr. Stookey acquired and became president of in 2002.

The primary goal of TTI is to develop new technologies for the early detection and quantification of dental caries that can be converted into instrumentation for use in dental offices. An early caries detection technique long under study by Dr. Stookey and others at IUSD's Oral Health Research Institute known as Quantitative Light Fluorescence (QLF) was demonstrated on the TV program as an example of work under way at TTI. A grant from the Indiana 21^st Century Research and Technology Fund supported early studies of the QLF, and two clinical studies funded in part by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) are currently in progress at IUSD and two other research sites.

To learn more about IUETC and TTI, go to http://iuetc.iu.edu.

Dr. Everett Interviewed on "Sound Medicine." Research on dental fluorosis currently under way by Dr. Eric Everett was a topic on the Jan. 24 segment of Sound Medicine, an IU School of Medicine weekly radio program airing Saturdays on WFYI Public Radio.

Dr. Everett is an assistant professor of oral facial genetics, dermatology, and medical and molecular genetics. He and his colleagues are using a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health's NIDCR to try to determine the role genetics plays in making people more susceptible or resistant to dental fluorosis.

Fluoridated drinking water, which is recognized by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as one of the top 10 public health measures ever initiated, has contributed to a 75 percent decline in tooth decay in Indiana over the last 25 years.

With the decline in tooth decay there has been an increase in dental fluorosis, which affects the cosmetic appearance and structure of tooth enamel and can occur following ingestion of excess fluoride during critical periods of tooth development. In his interview with Sound Medicine host Barbara Lewis, Dr. Everett explained that those at greatest risk for fluorosis are children in the 3- to 4-year-old range whose permanent teeth are still developing in the gums. After eruption, teeth can have white spots and appear slightly whiter than normal. One way parents can help control very young children's ingestion of excess fluoride, says Dr. Everett, is by monitoring their tooth brushing sessions, making sure the youngsters are brushing with but not swallowing fluoridated toothpaste.

The prevalence of fluorosis in the U.S. varies greatly, depending on location, naturally occurring fluoride in groundwater, and the number of sources of fluoride available to individuals. It is not yet understood why some individuals develop fluorosis and others do not. Dr. Everett is hoping that the four-year NIH study will help shed light on the role that genetics may play in fluorosis development and may also help determine the optimal use of fluorides to prevent dental decay while minimizing the occurrence of fluorosis.

Radiology Faculty Invited Back by Popular Demand. The Chicago Dental Society has once again asked two of our radiology faculty members to share their expertise at the society's Midwinter Meeting this month. Prof. Gail Williamson and Dr. Edwin Parks, professor of dental diagnostic sciences, are presenting a three-hour participation course not once but six times during a three-day period. It is titled "How Sharp Is Your Image? Methods to Improve Your Radiographic Skills."

Service With a -- Nice, Bright -- Smile. When health writer Ruth Padget Albright decided to discuss tooth whitening in her column for Indiana Alumni Magazine, she turned to our own Dr. Bruce Matis for his ample knowledge in this field. Dr. Matis, professor of operative dentistry, talked about tooth whitening and whiteners for an interview that was published in Ms. Albright's "House Call" column in the January-February 2004 issue of the magazine. Dr. Matis has conducted a considerable number of studies on tooth whiteners in his role as director of the school's Clinical Research Section. IU's system-wide alumni magazine has an international readership, including about 75,000 subscribers.

End February 2004 Calendar

Send items for March calendar by Feb. 24: Indiana University School of Dentistry, Room B32, 1121 West Michigan Street, Indianapolis IN 46202-5186. Fax: (317) 274-7188. E-mail: smcrum@iupui.edu