The competition recognized dental students for research excellence and introduced a new award to support early-stage dentist-scientists.
Dentsply Sirona and the American Association for Dental, Oral, and Craniofacial Research (AADOCR) have announced the winners of the 2026 Student Competition for Advancing Dental Research and its Application (SCADA) Awards. The winners were recognized during the 55th Annual Meeting of AADOCR, held in conjunction with the 104th General Session & Exhibition of the IADR in San Diego.
Competition Brings Together Global Dental Students
The 2026 competition included 61 dental students from across the US, along with seven international finalists from Canada, France, Thailand, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. All participants received travel and accommodation support to attend the meeting, where they were recognized for their abstracts, presentations, and question-and-answer sessions with judges.
“Since its conception in 1959, Dentsply Sirona has proudly supported SCADA as an opportunity for pre-doctoral students to discover the importance of dental research,” says Rainer Seeman, vice president and chief clinical officer at Dentsply Sirona, in a release. “We hope the competition inspires the next generation of dental researchers to build on this experience to discover new knowledge and innovations that benefit oral healthcare and the future of dentistry.”
2026 SCADA Award Winning Projects
The awards were divided into two main categories, recognizing multiple students for their research efforts.
In the Clinical Research and Public Health category, top honors went to Edson DeSousa of the Harvard School of Dental Medicine for his project, “Metabolic Syndrome and Dyslipidemia May Influence Periodontal Treatment Outcomes.” Evan Heidenreich of Kansas City University placed second, and Alyssa Saltz of the University of Kentucky placed third.
In the Basic and Translational Science Research category, Elizabeth Leon of Nova Southeastern University won the top award for her research, “Porphyromonas gingivalis Vesicles Control Osteoclast–Macrophage Lineage Fate.” Fatemeh Ebrahimi of the University of Texas School of Dentistry placed second, while Hannah Herzog of the University of California, San Francisco, took third.
New Research Award for Early-Stage Scientists
The event also featured the presentation of the inaugural AADOCR SCADA/Dentsply Sirona Research Award to Dr Jacqueline Mays. Mays is a mucosal immunologist and clinical trials dentist whose research centers on chronic graft-versus-host disease affecting the salivary glands and oral mucosa. She leads the Oral Immunobiology Unit within the Division of Intramural Research at NIDCR and directs the NIDCR Dental Clinical Research Fellowship program.
The new award was created to support early-stage dentist-scientists, such as post-doctoral scholars and pre-tenure faculty members, with the long-term goal of increasing the number of successfully funded researchers in dental, oral, and craniofacial biology. It is supported by a donation from the SCADA Alumni Association with matching funds from AADOCR.
“We are so proud to support aspiring dental researchers and dentist-scientists early in their careers and to have given them the opportunity to present their projects and build new connections,” says Dr Effie Ioannidou, president of the AADOCR, in a release. “Scientific discovery in the field of oral healthcare is a noble pursuit and critical to improving dentistry and outcomes for patients in the future.”
Photo: Dentsply Sirona
