Gold Medal Award for Excellence in Dental Research

Gold Medal Award Winner for 2021

Martha Somerman, D.D.S., Ph.D., has distinguished herself over a career of more than 50 years as the author of seminal research on the development and regeneration of oral tissue affected by gum disease. From 2011 to 2019, she served as director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, the lead U.S. agency for scientific research on dental, oral and craniofacial health and disease. In this role, Dr. Somerman expanded the agency’s clinical program focused on rare and undiagnosed diseases within the dental-oral-craniofacial complex. She also served as principal investigator of the Laboratory of Oral Connective Tissue Biology at the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases and as senior clinical advisory staff at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health.

Gold Medal Fellow Selected by Dr. Somerman

Erin Ealba Bumann, D.D.S., Ph.D., M.S., is a tenure-track assistant professor in the Department of Oral and Craniofacial Sciences at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, School of Dentistry. A board-certified pediatric dentist since 2018, Dr. Bumann researches the impact that adverse childhood events such as poverty can have on the emergence of permanent teeth, an association that may make it possible use tooth emergence as a screening tool to direct early intervention resources to the children who need them most. In addition, Dr. Bumann’s lab studies craniofacial bone formation focusing on the mandible; the hope is that this research will lead to the discovery of novel molecular-based therapies that can regulate jaw bone growth and development, thereby offering a noninvasive alternative to the surgical treatments currently available to address craniofacial malformations.