Congratulations to early-career researchers Dr Joanne Choi and Dr Zhen Dong, the recipients of SJWRI Research Publication Awards for 2020, which were announced at our Faculty end-of-year function on Friday 18 December. Our Research Publication Awards celebrate the best research articles authored by our academic staff and postgraduate students in the preceding year.
Research Publication Award
This award is to recognise excellence in research by acknowledging the research calibre and effort required to publish in high impact journals in science and dentistry. To be eligible, the manuscript must have been accepted for publication between 1 January and 31 December 2019. The recipient for this year is Dr Joanne Choi.
Dr Choi is the first and the corresponding author for this paper, which is based on the experimental work that she and co-authors carried out in 2018-2019 as part of a research project supported by the SJWRI's Sir Thomas Kay Sidey Early Career Research Fund (Project title: Development of novel antimicrobial, wear and corrosion resistant coating for teeth and dental restorations).
In the process of developing a new coating material for teeth and dental restorations, Dr Choi and co-authors identified the need for a study to evaluate the surface properties of currently available denture coating and glaze materials. Using various mechanical testing and analytical methods, the team were able to evaluate the surface properties of five different denture glazes available and look into the effect of aging over time. This study contributes to our understanding of surface glazed acrylic resin denture materials and how it improves the surface strength. The findings will help inform practice, by enabling dental practitioners to select the most effective polishing and coating material for dentures, and provides baseline data which the research field can use to develop corrosion and wear resistant coating materials.
As primary investigator and first author of the publication, Dr Choi contributed to the conceptualization of the topic, funding acquisition, project administration, methodology, data curation, formal analysis, investigation, write-up of the original manuscript as well as reviewing and editing until the paper was published. The Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials is an influential journal in both Engineering and Dental Material Science fields, with a ranking of Quartile 1 journal in Engineering and Material Science area (Mechanics of Materials) with an Impact Factor of 3.372 (5-Year Impact Factor 3.622; Cite Score 6.6). The paper was accepted for publication on 17 December 2019 and became available online 20 December 2019.
Dr Choi was also recentlty announced as the winner of the SJWRI's Undergraduate Research Supervisor of the Year award.
Choi JJE, Uy CE, Ramani RS & Waddell JN (2020). Evaluation of surface roughness, hardness and elastic modulus of nanoparticle containing light-polymerized denture glaze materials. Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials, 103:103601.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jmbbm.2019.103601
Postgraduate Research Publication Award
This award is to recognise excellence in postgraduate student research by acknowledging the research calibre and effort required to publish in high impact journals in science and dentistry. The publication must have been accepted between 1 January and 31 December 2019, and have been written by a Masters or Doctoral research student. The recipient is Dr Zhen Dong.
Dr Dong recently completed a PhD in the SJWRI under the lead supervision of A/Prof Dawn Coates, exploring potential biomarkers for mammalian stem cells, as well as the key proteins, biological processes and pathways involved in stem cell maintenance, development and activation during deer antler generation and regeneration. Deer antler is the only known mammalian structure that can annually regenerate to produce a complex tissue, and is therefore unique in providing a mammalian model of complete organ regeneration based on stem cells.
Dr Dong's award-winning publication, 'Quantitative proteomic analysis of antler stem cells as a model of mammalian organ regeneration', was published in the Journal of Proteomics. The study investigated differentially-regulated proteins between different antler stem cell populations using a variety of proteomics approaches. The work indicated that the process of epithelial-mesenchymal transition may be involved in the initiation of antler regeneration including the first stage of scar-less wound healing. Cell mobility is also highly regulated during antler regeneration. Energy and nucleotide metabolism may however be less active in antler regeneration as compared to that in antler generation phase. These results provide new insights into the underlying mechanisms of stem cell-based regeneration of mammalian organs.
As first author, Dr Dong had the lead role in designing the research, performing the majority of the research and writing the manuscript. At the time of publication the Journal of Proteomics had an impact factor of 3.722 and was in the 1st Quartile of Biophysics journals.
Dong Z, Coates D, Liu Q, Sun H & Li C. (2019). Quantitative proteomic analysis of deer antler stem cells as a model of mammalian organ regeneration. Journal of Proteomics, 195, 98-113. https://doi: 10.1016/j.jprot.2019.01.004
Congratulations to Dr Choi and Dr Dong on receiving these awards.
Dr Joanne Choi.
Dr Zhen Dong.