3 days ago
ECU School of Dental Medicine Professor Leads New Effort to Expand Dental Research
GREENVILLE, N.C. (WNCT) — At the ECU School of Dental Medicine, one professor is piloting programs to help expand and strengthen the research happening for students and faculty.
Alexandre R. Vieira spent 18 years at the University of Pittsburgh, and two years ago decided it was time for a change.
'I got to a point in my career that I thought I could contribute more. So I look for places where I probably could make a contribution and East Carolina would be a good place because the school here was relatively new. We have about 15, 18 years of the school functioning and it got to a point that now it could establish a more explicit and intensive research program,' Dr. Alexandre R. Vieira, professor and associate dean for research at ECU School of Dental Medicine said.
Up North, he established a protocol where he organized clinical information from patients, and created infrastructure for future research.
'Here I would like to implement a similar protocol, but a more ambitious one, because the way a school is designed, we have our students training across the state. We have eight clinics, but this one here in Greenville, so nine clinics where the students learn dentistry and do their rotations. So we see patients with differences in their needs based on their geographic areas,' he said.
He is piloting this research protocol here in Greenville, and says he wants to bring it to every clinic the ECU School of Dental Medicine has across the state.
'To be able to ask the questions to identify where the problems lie, so we can actually test the hypothesis that might be improving those problems so we can actually help North Carolinians and in the legislature to change policy so they address that properly,' he said.
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