March 28, 2006

BIRMINGHAM, AL — The UAB School of Dentistry leapt from No. 19 to No. 10 in recently announced rankings based on fiscal 2005 funding by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), one of the National Institutes of Health to dental schools and academic institutions in the country.

NIDCR is the primary sponsor of dental, oral and craniofacial research and research training for the NIH. It released its rankings based on grants to U.S. academic and dental institutions in mid-March, ranking UAB as No. 10 in both categories, with a total of $6.95 million in funding.

“This school was once ranked number four in national funding,” said Huw F. Thomas, B.D.S., M.D., Ph.D., dean of the UAB School of Dentistry. “It had some of the leaders in dental research in the U.S. and the world.” That standing slipped for a variety of reasons including gradual reduction in state funding, loss of key faculty members, national shortages of dental faculty and changes in funding approaches at the NIH.

“But these current rankings illustrate we are well on our way to reclaiming our leadership position in research,” Thomas said. He added the school also is hoping for improvements in overall rankings based on total NIH funding, expected in June.

The changes in ranking reflect the school’s recent reorganization and receipt of three significant grants from the NIDCR, including one of the largest grants in the school’s history. UAB was the only school in the nation to receive all three of these major grants from NIDCR. In 2003, the school received a one-year planning grant from the NIDCR that helped the school evaluate and reorganize its research infrastructure. Changes that emerged from that planning process, including diversifying and collaborating on current research efforts, identification of key research focus areas, the addition of a new associate dean for research and the creation of the UAB Institute for Oral Health Research, all helped paved the road.

“One of the major things we discovered from our planning grant was that we needed to take more advantage of the interdisciplinary and collaborative environment here at UAB,” said Gregg H. Gilbert, D.D.S., M.B.A., chairman of diagnostic sciences and principal investigator of the 2004 planning grant. “We are doing that now. Using UAB’s core facilities, interacting and collaborating on projects with faculty in other areas such as the schools of medicine, engineering and education, and establishing cross-campus partnerships have all helped the School of Dentistry become part of the milieu, and vastly improve our research.”

“Our emphasis now is to get in concert with UAB research goals, to bring the dental school back to a position of prominence in its research enterprise,” Thomas said.

The school of dentistry’s research is currently concentrated in four main areas, said the school’s new associate dean for research Mary MacDougall, Ph.D. “These include dental practice research, which is study of how to provide the best health services to our patients; biomaterials and tissue engineering research, which includes the study of new materials for things like fillings, dental implants and tissue or tooth regeneration; microbiology and immunology, which includes the study of the development of immunity and infections in the oral cavity and how the body responds; and craniofacial development and biology, which includes the study of genetics, normal tissues of the face and head as related to genetic diseases and syndromes,” she said.

“We understand these rankings are mostly a way for us to compare ourselves with other universities and dental schools across the country,” Thomas said. “But the good news, for our patients, is these numbers are a testament to the fact that our faculty are making major contributions to the field of dentistry and disseminating that information to our students, the dentists of tomorrow. This obviously underscores and fuels our commitment to the highest quality clinical care. And for that, we are very proud.”