Competitive UBC funding supports Dentistry profs’ initiatives

2019-04-30

Drs. Mario Brondani, Leeann Donnelly, Nancy Ford, Denise Laronde, and Chris Overall all received funding from the University of British Columbia for initiatives in their respective areas. Their projects which will enhance learning and discovery at the Faculty of Dentistry. Competition for funding from the university is highly competitive.

Drs. Brondani and Donnelly’s proposal, “The community as a teacher: addressing issues of sexual diversity, drug use and addiction within the undergraduate dental and dental hygiene curricula,” will receive $13,000 per year for two years from the 2019 Equity & Inclusion Scholars Program. As one of six projects picked for 2019/20, the selection committee concurred that their collaborative and community-centred research project promises to fill a clearly articulated gap in oral health sciences at UBC and beyond.

Dr. Ford secured $35,000 for 2019/20 from the Vice-President, Research & Innovation Office under their 2019 Research Shared Facilities Grant competition. She submitted an application to fund the Micro-CT platform in the Centre for High-Throughput Phenogenomics. This was one of 13 applications funded from a total pool of 65 applications.

Dr. Laronde’s proposal, “Year II: Enhancing students’ oral mucosal screening skills through the integration of live patients and video within an oral medicine and pathology course,” has been awarded $19,200 from the 2019 Teaching and Learning Enhancement Fund (TLEF), for its second year of funding. Ninety-one applicants across UBC-V applied for this funding.

Dr. Overall achieved two successful applications in the 2019 Research Facilities Support Grant competition administered through the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation. In April he was awarded $50,000 for much needed HVAC infrastructure in the Centre for Blood Research located at the Life Sciences Institute. The UBC competition received 65 applications with 13 selected for funding. This is the second to UBC Dentistry (15% of the total awards). His award provides funding for an upgrade to the HVAC infrastructure—cooling units for the mass spectrometry lab—allowing for the installation of other new equipment funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation. In September he was also awarded $150,000 for a Thermoplus PSC 060 Refrigeration Unit for the Proteomics Suite in the Centre for Blood Research located at the Life Sciences Institute. This equipment will alleviate the local temperature in the Suite which is now an intolerable 34°C—a temperature at which mass spectrometers lose accuracy and cannot be used.

Dr. Mario Brondani

Dr. Leeann Donnelly

Dr. Nancy Ford

Dr. Denise Laronde

Dr. Chris Overall