As reported in last year's progress report, our first appointee on this institutional Dentist- Scientist Award (DSA) was Dr. Nita (nee Chainani) Wu. Dr. Wu received her US dental degree from the University of Pennsylvania (DMD, 1996), having previously received her BDS at Nair Hospital Dental College in Bombay, India. She entered our DSA program in July of 1996. She is pursuing a program combining her PhD studies in oral biology with clinical specialty training in oral medicine. Because of the flexibility of oral medicine in comparison with some of the other specialties, Dr. Wu has been able to pursue a fully integrated program from the very beginning. In her first two years in the program, she has taken PhD course work in developmental biology, molecular and cell biology, histology, immunology, microbiology, virology, epidemiology and biostatistics, and bioethics, as well as regular participation in journal club and attendance at seminars. In addition she has completed her laboratory rotations and has been active in clinical rotations within the oral medicine program. Through elective coursework in epidemiology and clinical trials design over the past year, she has become increasingly interested in clinical research and hopes to make this area a future focus of her PhD. This is timely for us, as we are currently in the process of developing a clinical research track within our Oral Biology graduate program. However, should this program not be sufficiently well-developed to accommodate Dr. Wu's DSA program, she could also carry out her PhD in our affiliated epidemiology program in the School of Public Health at UC Berkeley. As the next step in her development, she will be concurrently enrolled in the MPH program in epidemiology over the next academic year, while continuing her oral medicine-oral biology program. At the end of this period, she should be able to make a final decision concerning the focus of her dissertation research and, consequently, under which PhD program's auspices it should be conducted. Dr. Wu also presented a case at the annual meeting of the American Association of Oral Medicine in Puerto Rico earlier this month (May, 1998).
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