Timothy DeRouen, Ph.D.
Rena D’Souza, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Dean and Professor, University of Utah School of
Dentistry
D’Souza has been strongly committed to education and curriculum development throughout her academic career She has a keen appreciation for the 21st Century educational needs of dental students, which will enable them to provide oral health care at the highest standards of professional excellence. Dr. D’Souza has received 15 institutional awards for Teaching Excellence including one from the University of Texas Dental Branch Alumni Association. Her mentoring efforts have been recognized by several organizations, the most notable of which was from the National Student Research Group of the AADR in 2005. Several of her mentees now hold faculty positions worldwide.
As Chair of a large department of Biomedical Sciences at Baylor College of Dentistry in Dallas from 2006 to 2012, Dr. D’Souza developed several broad initiatives that enhanced intellectual integration throughout the college through the breaking down of silos. This led to new educational missions and the implementation of an innovative evidence-based dentistry curriculum for the DDS program as well as integrative and interdisciplinary basic and applied sciences programs for the DDS, MS, DDS/PhD and dental hygiene programs.
Dr. D’Souza has received uninterrupted funding for 23 years through grant awards from the National Institutes of Health and other agencies. She also served as principal investigator (PI) and director of NIH-funded institutional research training grants since 2003 and has supervised the training of dentists and dentists-scientists at the predoctoral and postdoctoral levels. In 2010, Dr. D’Souza’s scholarly efforts were recognized by the prestigious Presidential Award for Research Excellence from the Texas A&M Health Science Center. She was inducted into the German National Academy of Sciences (Leopoldina) in 2012. As President of the American Association for Dental Research in 2012-2013, Dr. D’Souza successfully ed a new governance structure for its Board and spearheaded numerous initiatives for advancing research missions for dental schools throughout the US..
Frank Licari, D.D.S., M.P.H., M.B.A.
Dr. Licari is currently the Dean of the Roseman University of Health Sciences College of Dental Medicine in South Jordan, UT. He most recently served as Professor and Associate Dean at Midwestern University’s College of Dental Medicine-Illinois where he headed the office of Academic Affairs. He was responsible for student admissions, research, faculty development, institutional outcomes assessment, student assessment, accreditation, and for developing the overall academic program for the College which matriculated its inaugural class in fall 2011.
Dr. Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch, D.D.S., Ph.D.
Carol Anne Murdoch-Kinch is Clinical Professor of Oral Medicine and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. As associate dean Dr. Murdoch-Kinch oversees all educational programs at the School of Dentistry, and is primarily responsible for accreditation activities and compliance. Over the past three years Dr. Murdoch-Kinch led the design, development and implementation of the new DDS curriculum, while implementing infrastructure changes to support this new curriculum. At the university level, she chairs the health sciences’ Interprofessional Education Steering Committee which is creating opportunities for all health professions students to learn about and with each other, to develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes needed for collaborative team-based patient care.
Dr. Murdoch-Kinch is a 1985 graduate of Dalhousie University Faculty of Dentistry. After practicing general dentistry in Halifax, Nova Scotia, for several years, she completed a residency in oral medicine and radiology, and completed a PhD from Indiana University in 1996. She is a Diplomate of the American Board of Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, the American Board of Oral Medicine, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Dental Surgeons of Edinburgh (Oral Medicine). She has run a hospital-based oral medicine practice at the University of Michigan Health System where she also conducts multi-disciplinary clinical research in oral oncology, salivary dysfunction, and salivary diagnostics.
Ronnie Myers, D.D.S.
Dr. Ronnie Myers graduated from Columbia University College of Dental Medicine, trained as a Pediatric Dentist and completed a fellowship at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He was in private practice while also holding an appointment at the Bronx Developmental Center prior to coming to Columbia full time in 1982 as the Director of the General Practice Residency Program at New York-Presbyterian Hospital. As program director, he initiated a screening program for pre-cardiac transplant patients and helped forge an affiliation with Memorial Sloan Kettering to develop a two-year oncology program for dental residents.
In 1991 Dr. Myers was appointed as the Assistant Dean for Clinical Affairs at Columbia University College of Dental Medicine. He was promoted to Associate Dean in 2001, Vice Dean for Administrative Affairs in 2011 and, most recently also served at the College as Interim Dean from July 2012-August 2013.
Dr. Myers has been a consultant to the Commission on Dental Accreditation, is currently the Vice Chair of the New York State Board of Dentistry and is a past Chair of the American Dental Education Association Section on Clinic Administration. He is a reviewer for the Journal of the American Dental Association, the Journal of Dental Education and the American Journal of Infection Control.
In addition to his administrative duties, Dr. Myers maintains an active private practice in general dentistry, lectures on infection prevention issues in Dentistry and the relationship between systemic disease and oral health.
Richard Niederman, D.M.D.
Dr. Richard Niederman is professor and chair, Department of Epidemiology and Health Promotion, College of Dentistry, New York University, and director of the NYU Center for Evidence-Based Dentistry.
He graduated magna cum laude in 1976 from the Harvard School of Dental Medicine where he also received his periodontal specialty training. He received certificate training in Evidence-Based Medicine at Oxford University in 1996.
He is the founding USA editor of the journal Evidence-Based Dentistry; and co-author of the book Evidence-based Dentistry. He has published more than 100 evidence-based articles most recently on practice implementation, and provided training in evidence-based dentistry on 5 continents over the last 10 years.
