Ana Bedran-Russo (née Ana Karina Bedran de Castro) is Associate Dean for

Research Research is " creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

and Professor and Department Head of the Department of Oral Biology and at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Dentistry.

Life

Originally from Brazil, Bedran-Russo earned her DDS at the Araçatuba School of Dentistry in

São Paulo São Paulo (, ; Portuguese for ' Saint Paul') is the most populous city in Brazil, and is the capital of the state of São Paulo, the most populous and wealthiest Brazilian state, located in the country's Southeast Region. Listed by the Ga ...

; her MS in operative dentistry/ clinical sciences at

Piracicaba Piracicaba ( or ) is a city located in the Brazilian state of São Paulo. The population is 407,252 (2020) in an area of 1378.07 km². It is at an elevation of 547 m above sea level. Name The place name comes from a word in the Tupi langua ...

; and her PhD in dental material sciences at Piracicaba. She came to the United States in 2001 as a visiting research scholar to develop research in biomaterials at University of North Carolina. Bedran-Russo taught at the

University of Campinas The State University of Campinas ( pt, Universidade Estadual de Campinas), commonly called Unicamp, is a public research university in the state of São Paulo, Brazil. Unicamp is consistently ranked among the top universities in Brazil and ...

's Piracicaba School of Dentistry in Brazil, the

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

and the

University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry The University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry evolved from the Columbian Dental College, founded in Chicago in 1891. The college informally affiliated with the University of Illinois in 1901, and was chartered as an official college o ...

. As a clinician-scientist, she holds research grants from federal, institutional and association sources. She has over 130 scientific peer reviewed papers and over 170 abstracts. She has served the International Association for Dental Research and the American Dental Association. She has received the 2014 UIC Researcher of the Year award and the 2021 Way Klingler Research Award. She is a 2018 alumna of the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program. She is a clinician-scientist that is highly recognized in the field of dental

biomaterials A biomaterial is a substance that has been engineered to interact with biological systems for a medical purpose, either a therapeutic (treat, augment, repair, or replace a tissue function of the body) or a diagnostic one. As a science, biomateria ...

. She has published in the areas of structural, mechanical, and compositional studies of dentin and interfaces between dental tissues and dental biomaterials. She pioneered the use of bioinspired strategies to mimic native reinforcement mechanisms various hierarchical levels of the extracellular matrix organization and mediate the biomechanics and biostability of dentin. Among these strategies, her research has utilized nature-derived oligomeric proanthocyanidins as interventional biomaterials, work that has gained attention beyond the field of dentistry. She has received research funding support from the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

, foundation awards, and corporate contracts. She has published over 150 manuscripts and four book chapters.

Private life

Her husband, Stephen Russo, is a

periodontist Periodontology or periodontics (from Ancient Greek , – 'around'; and , – 'tooth', genitive , ) is the specialty of dentistry that studies supporting structures of teeth, as well as diseases and conditions that affect them. The supporting ...

References

External links

Faculty page at University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry
Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Women dentists Brazilian emigrants to the United States University of Illinois Chicago faculty University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill faculty {{US-med-bio-stub