Dentists from all over the world send their broken dental restorations to Janet Quinn. And she loves it.

As a specialist in Fractography, she has become one of a dozen people in the country trained to analyze the whys, wheres and hows of tooth breakage, and qualified to make informed decisions about increasing longevity of dental materials.

Quinn’s path was facilitated by ADA Foundation funding through the Great-West Fellowship
Program, in recognition for work on her thesis in mechanical properties of dental materials at the University of Maryland. The Fellowship connected her with people who enabled the pursuit of her work in mechanical testing of materials and led to a permanent job with PRC and NIST.

"This is my dream job, and without assistance from the ADA Foundation, there was no way
I could have connected with my wonderful colleagues at PRC. Imagination and curiosity
are really valued here, and I can follow every idea to its conclusion." Quinn adds, “My goal is to establish patterns to make predictions about properties of restorative materials, so newer and better ones can be developed sooner. And if you have any broken dental restorations, please send them!"