Fall 2006

COVER STORY Bridging into Dentistry Back to School Joint Degree Program Bridging into Denistry – In Brief

A NEW, JOINT DEGREE program for students wanting to earn a doctor of dental medicine (D.M.D.) and a doctorate in bioengineering is now available through the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in Augusta and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Administrators expect to enroll the first students in the program in the fall of 2007.

photo courtesy Medical College of Georgia A joint degree program for students wanting to earn a doctor of dental medicine (D.M.D.) and a doctorate in bioengineering is now available through the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in Augusta and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. (300-dpi JPEG version - 998k)

A new, joint degree program for students wanting to earn a doctor of dental medicine (D.M.D.) and a doctorate in bioengineering is now available through the Medical College of Georgia (MCG) in Augusta and the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. Administrators expect to enroll the first students in the program in the fall of 2007.

Students will spend two years in dental school at MCG and then four to five years at Georgia Tech, followed by additional clinical training at MCG. While at Georgia Tech, students will continue to hone their clinical dental skills by working with MCG faculty members performing dental work on patients at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta.

“There are other D.M.D./Ph.D. degree programs in the United States,” says Georgia Tech Professor of Biomedical Engineering Barbara Boyan, who co-directs the joint degree program with George Schuster, the associate dean for research in the MCG School of Dentistry. “But ours is the first between an engineering university and a dental school.”

Because the two universities are in different cities, the program was designed to continue students’ clinical training while they conduct research for their Ph.D. degrees.

While at Georgia Tech, students will have the opportunity to conduct research on a variety of oral health problems, Boyan notes. Students may help develop novel materials, new imaging and craniofacial plastic surgery techniques, diagnostic tests or infectious oral disease treatments.

They will conduct research alongside both a bioengineering faculty member at Georgia Tech and a dental faculty member at MCG. At Georgia Tech, the bioengineering faculty includes three members who have joint degrees: Don Ranly, director of DenTec, who holds a Ph.D. in physiology and a doctor of dental surgery degree (D.D.S.); Zvi Schwartz, who has a Ph.D. in experimental pathology and a D.M.D. degree; and Rene Olivares-Navarrete, who holds a Ph.D. in biomaterials and a D.D.S. degree. Boyan is the former president of the American Association of Dental Research and has conducted studies in the field for 30 years. She holds a Ph.D. in biology.

“The graduates of this program will become practicing dentists, but we hope they will also become educators of the next generation of educators,” Boyan says. “We hope they will stay in academic dentistry and stay in Georgia.”

Boyan and George Schuster, the associate dean of the MCG School of Dentistry, are applying for grant funds to support students who enter the joint degree program.