Jillian Rigert, a student at the Southern Illinois University School of Dental Medicine, won this year’s prestigious National Students Research Group (NSRG) award for her research project related to pain management in dentistry and medicine.
The award is given each year annually at the Hinman Student Research Symposium to one student based on that individual’s work related to a research project. The NSRG is part of the American Association for Dental Research. The 17th Hinman Student Research Symposium recently was held in Memphis, Tenn. and featured oral and poster presentations of research projects by dental students and graduate students from dental schools across the nation. A total of 90 students represented 41 dental schools in 24 states, the District of Columbia and four Canadian provinces.
Rigert studied the time course of expression of the TRPA1 receptor, which has a role in pain perception following injury to dental pulp. The project was directed by Dr. Kevin C. Rowland, associate professor of physiology at the SIU School of Dental Medicine.
The Symposium was sponsored by the University of Tennessee College of Dentistry and co-sponsored by the Hinman Dental Society, which holds one of the nation’s largest continuing dental education meetings in Atlanta each March. The Symposium is also supported in part by grants from the National Institute for Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), the ADEAGies Foundation, the Procter & Gamble Company and the Tennessee Dental Association Foundation.
The keynote speaker at the Welcoming Banquet was Dr. David Wong, associate dean of research at the UCLA School of Dentistry and immediate past president of the American Association for Dental Research.
HSSU early childhood grant
Harris-Stowe State University was recently awarded a grant from Savvis Inc. for its William L. Clay Sr. Early Childhood Development/Parenting Education Center, to support the purchase of iPads and reading technology.
The grant, in the amount of $3,660, was a part of the Savvis Cares charitable giving program. With the reading component being a vital part of the Clay Center’s curriculum, any resources that would aide in the goal to increase vocabulary and stimulate the minds of children, will prove to be beneficial to the children and their learning experiences in the center.
The project was designed to engage the children in reading and language development activities for eight months, while implementing a technology component through the help of community volunteers who will serve as designated readers. Nearly 100 children will be able to participant in this project.
“The teachers are excited about the possibility of introducing technology into the daily learning experiences of children,” said Dr. Patricia Johnson, director of the Clay Center. “Children will be able to have both auditory and visual access to some of their favorite stories and the characters in those stories. It’s more interactive when children can hear the characters speak, rather than just seeing pictures and text on the printed pages.”
