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August 2009

The Association for Dental Education in Europe held its 35th meeting in the beautiful city of Helsinki, Finland.  The theme of the meeting was Lifelong Learning and Continuing Dental Education. Keynote speakers from Helsinki and Leeds set the theme with presentations on Student Motivation to Learning and integrating learning into practice.  This theme continued with a session devoted to Continuing Education in Europe.  There was a Birmingham connection with  Stephane Simon providing the French view.  Stephane has now returned to Paris where he is working both as specialist in Endodontics and teaching part-time at Paris 7 Dental School.  Stephane's talk was very humorous and well received. 

There was strong representation from Birmingham at the research poster sessions.  Upen Patel, Deborah White and Damien Walmsley presented their posters during the thursday and friday sessions.  There was also the chance to sample life in Helsinki.  The conference venue, hotels and sights were all on the No 4 tram route.  Upen Patel became an instant expert on how to traverse the City via the tram network and passed on this knowledge to the rest of us.  The Social highlight of the conference was the opening ceremony which included a spell bounding performance from a young local folk group called Kardemimmit.  This concert took place in the University of Helsinki Great Hall and was followed by a civic reception at the City Hall.  The European Dental Students Society also took place before the ADEE conference and there was representation from BUDSS at the meeting as well.

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The University holidays have allowed a chance for staff to ‘get away’, and saw several individuals travelling both far and wide. Kris Coomar returned to his home city, Melbourne (Australia) for the first time in five years for some ‘R&R’ and to work on the ‘Aussie’ accent he now has lost! Although in mid-winter, the Australian weather was mild and sunny. During his trip to Melbourne, Kris also spent time at the University of Melbourne Dental School touring their facilities, observing undergraduate/postgraduate teaching, exchanging ideas and discussing potential future collaborative projects. Despite their distance apart, the University of Melbourne and the University of Birmingham Dental Schools have close ties through the Universitas 21 consortium, an international network of leading universities globally. Although back in the UK now, Kris and others will continue to visit/exchange between the UK and Australian dental schools into the future, further enriching the institutions and reinforcing their international influence.

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If you have been looking at the covers of the British Dental Journal then you will see that they are featuring the Dental Schools.  Each School has had a photograph taken of the building in a particular looking-up close-up style.  This week it was the turn of the Birmingham Dental Hospital and School and the photographer has taken a suitable photograph.  Trouble is no one told the photographer that he was taking a picture of our link block featuring our Toilets!  Enjoy the view!

The front cover of the British Dental Journal featuring the Birmingham Dental Hospital and School.

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I hope you are enjoying the last fling of summer and ready for the new term.  I found that Birmingham has started to grow Flowers everywhere!  Not sure if you have noticed them but on my walk from Birmingham Snow Hill there were all these mega plantpots.  The larger ones are multicoloured whilst the smaller ones have red flowers in them.  Certainly brightens up the day!

Here are a few pics to enjoy!

July 2009

So we are once again at the end of the Academic Year.  It has been an exciting year with many positive outcomes for the School.  The most positive one must be our RAE result that showed the school in a good light with our research being ranked at the International level.  Already post RAE, research active staff have been successful at attracting new sources of funding and publishing in high citation journals.  This last week has also seen dentistry showcased by a series of lectures at the College of Medical and Dental Sciences.  Presentations on our research were given on both Tuesday and Thursday which will lead to links with other research groups in the College.

As a final flourish to the term on the Learning and Teaching front, we have the part-time teachers away day.  Not only do we have the delight of the fire lecture but it will be an opportunity for the different speciality areas to relay information on what they teach to the students.

At the end of the day the term will officially finish and staff and students will be taking a well deserved rest.  Your blogger will still be active as he has a few places to visit and will keep you up to date.

So for all readers of the Blog on behalf of the School may we take this opportunity of wishing you a great summer and see you all in September (if not before!).

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The University of Birmingham Open Day was held a few weeks ago and our very own Donald Spence was there advising on entry to Dentistry.  I knew someone had taken a picture of him and I finally tracked it down to the Live updates site for the recent Open Day.

So here is a picture of Donald in his best suit.

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Thanks for the memories



Many of you will remember the 8th Floor phantom head laboratory. It has seen many dental students and recently hygiene and therapy students pass through.  The basic layout has not really changed since the building was opened in the Sixties but the technology has changed.  However the fabric of the room was in need of updating. 

Last weekend work started on the refurbishment of the 8th floor phantom head laboratory and will be completed towards the end of September.  There has been a tremendous amount of pre-planning and this has been co-ordinated by Phil Tomson and his team.  There will be much building activity during the summer months and the school is excited to see what the new state of the art facilities will look like.



The phantom heads were a little sad at the passing of an era and so they got together for a farewell party.  Here we see them chatting away and some even put on party hats for the occasion!

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The Graduation Ball was held outside Birminghm at the impressive Forrest of Arden near Meriden.  First off let me tell you that it was a fun night and the organising committee had gone to a lot of trouble to make sure it was going to be successful.  There was a lot of detail including special gold painted dental casts to hold the menus (Well done Mr T).  Prof Lumley and Saniel Gandesha made the introductions at the start.  There was a string quartet playing during the meal and there was a magician/hypnotist who worked the tables.  He even managed to hypnotize Saniel and make him believe that he had not clothes on!  The speeches were given by Giles Perryer and Dominic Stewardson who remembered the small things that many of the final year had done during the year but did not necessarily want their freinds to remember.  Then it was time for dancing to the Band or catching up with people for the last time.  It was a great mix of students, University and NHS staff.

Good luck to all those new dentists who will be starting work in August.  Remember to Fly the Flag for Birmingham and the School wishes you every success in your future careers.

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Graduation 2009
The Day started very early as I arrived to have photos taken with Bernhard's family.  It was very different being on the receiving end of the degree process.  We queued up in the Avon room with all the other students waiting for our photos.  Many of the dental students were there with proud parents and I met Rob MacKenna and his Mum. The picture of the two of them shows how important degree day is to everyone.  It was time for a coffee and a chance to meet up with people but the ceremony was starting at 10.30am.  So as members of staff we headed up to the top of the Aston Webb to Ede and Ravenscroft to get our robes.  Dentistry teachers turn up in their numbers and many of the part time practitioners are there.  This shows the loyalty that is given to the school.  Time to process and the Great Hall is just wonderful when it is full on degree day and the organ playing is at is finest.  The Faculties being presented to the Chancellor Dominic Cadbury were Law and Dentistry.  Our very own Head of School Professor Philip Lumley welcomed the congregation.  The honorary graduant was Sir Michael Lyons, Chairman of the BBC Trust who gave an uplifting address.  As always it is with a sense of pride and pleasure that the graduands are presented and there were PhD, MPhil, MSc, BDS, Biomaterials and Hygiene and Therapy presented.  The Chancellor closed the congregation and we possessed out to the Thunderbirds theme.  The day was glorious and we went past old Joe the clock and moved onto the Library steps where photographs were taken.  Time to congratulate and have fun. 

For me it was time to be with Bernhard's family and we went to Michelle’s for lunch.  Also there were Prof Chapple and Prof Burke entertaining our sponsors.

 

Readers of the Blog will know that we have the occasional series on our Golden Girls.  subtitle life after retiring from the Dental School.  Here we have another item from the girls

Hi there,
Yes,we are at it again.  Using our retirement fund to venture forth - to Royal Ascot this time.

Good Night and Good Morning from Vancouver. 



Louis MacKenzie and Damien Walmsley are following up a Universitas 21 Initiative on the International Blogging Project.  They are attending a conference in Vancouver with representatives from Universities of British Columbia, Hong Kong, Monterey (Mexico), California San Francisco, Saskatchewan and Melbourne.  Louis and Damien arrived a day early to get over the jet lag and discover Vancouver.  Here are a picture of Sunset on Saturday and Sunday morning to make your Monday morning start off with a smile.

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What is in the back of your car?  This Blog entry is a Cribs view of my car boot.  You are able to see from left to right the following: - My shopping which has the ingredients for my spaghetti bolognese meal yesterday, my travel money for Vancouver where I am off to this weekend and a black bin bag of clothes to drop off to St Mary's Hospice. 

But in the middle are 4 volumes of a PhD thesis belonging to Dr Bernhard Felver. 

This is just to let Bernhard know who is back in Austria that his PhD is safe and sound and waiting for him when he comes for his degree ceremony in July.  Not only will the degree ceremony be celebrating our undergraduate dental students but there will be several Postgraduate students from the school who will be getting their MPhil or PhD degrees.  We congratulate our postgraduate students and wish them well on their future careers.

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The School of Dentistry was represented at the University elearning day with presentations by Giles Perryer on the "MagScope – a component-free virtual microscope / image viewer" and Damien Walmsley on "International Peer Review Project for Dental Students in BLOG Format".  The College of Medical and Dental Sciences were well represented with talks on capture techniques for lecture recording and the use of the PebblePAD ePortfolio system.  The day provided examples of good elearning practice.  There was also the chance to network and take part in general e-learning issues.  Thanks should go to Trevor Batchelor and the elearning team for putting together a very interesting and interactive day.

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Mike Hofmann, a Lecturer in Biomaterials, has been awarded an EPSRC first grant to fund his work on “Optimising a bioresorbable brushite bone cement for porosity controlled adjustable drug release”. The project is a follow-up of Mike`s research on resorbable ceramic bone cements. He started working on these cements when came to the Biomaterials unit here at the School of Dentistry as an EU Marie Curie research fellow in 2004. 

Congratulations go to Mike on obtaining this prestigious funding.

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Europerio was held  in Stockholm from June 4th to 6th and we have news of the confernence from Professor Iain Chapple who is Treasurer of the European Federation of Periodontology (EFP).

The meeting was a huge success with over 6500 attendees and over 5000 official delegates. It was the largest meeting in Periodontology & Implantology in Europe if not the world, with 28 countries represented.  Birmingham was well represented and Mike Milward gave a keynot paper on "The impact of aging in the periodontitis patients.    Iain gave two presentations which were entitled "21st century technology in practice: a novel approach to improving patients’ oral care behaviours" and "How does diet affect inflammation?" Professor Thomas Dietrich was also at the meeting giving a presentation on "Periodontitis and edentulism increase all-cause mortality in men."

Paul Weston and Amit Patel were also there from Birmingham Dental School/Hospital.



Iain Chapple was busy with several meetings including the coming together of the two   executives in the world of Periodontology. The European Federation of Periodontology and the American Association of Periodontology met agree common strategic goals. Iain was also on hand to greet Enric Masdevall, the owner of Dentaid who have become the first official Partner of the EFP.



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Winner - University of Birmingham Graduate School Poster Competition !

I’m delighted to report that Upen Patel won first prize for the Life & Health Sciences Deanery (includes all of MDS college and Biosciences etc) at today’s competition during the University Graduate School Research Poster Conference for his poster entitled “Ultrasound induced dental regeneration” – well done Upen and I’m sure that the substantial cash prize will help your research !  This is a very significant achievement and highlights the importance of emphasising the School’s research profile within the University.

Tony Smith
Director of Research
School of Dentistry

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So you have passed finals successfully and it is about time to take a holiday.  Nothing else to do but wander around the shops where you get an interview with the Birmingham Post. 

So here is a Q & A piece about one of our recently qualified students.  Have fun reading!

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Just returned from the BDA conference in Glasgow which was under the Presidency of Dr John Drummond.  John was last seen in Birmingham as our external examiner at the beginning of June.  There were several good speakers including an old friend of the School, Niek Opdam from the University of Nijmegen.  Niek spoke on posterior composites.  Other speakers included Damien Walmsley who gave a systematic review on the use of Botox and Paul Speight on mouth cancer screening.  There was also many core CPD lectures and seminars for the whole dental team including dental radiology and infection control. Phil Lumley informs me that Gavin Hastings talk on Leadership was very inspirational.  Many current and ex Birmingham students were spotted out and about at conference. As always it was good to see VT dentists and other old friends of the school and hospital. 



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The School is pleased to welcome John Clement who is the Professor and Inaugural Chair of Forensic Odontology at the University of Melbourne, Australia.  John has come on a Universitas 21 funded grant to work with Giles Perryer.  The aim is to produce several elearning modules on forensic odontology for use on the Universitas 21 network.  

Whilst he was her Prof Clement gave a lecture to Staff and students on the recent Bushfires that took place in Victoria.  His work as a forensic odontologist assisted the police and other services in identifying the victims.  The description of what happened to people in the fires and how they were identified proved to be a difficult but essential lecture.  The main theme of John's lecture demonstrated how important the teeth and related structures assist in identification after such distressing disasters.  John emphasised the vital role of General Dental Practitioners in keeping up to date records of their patients.

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Congratulations

to all Final Year students on passing your examination.

 

Traditionally, meetings of the ABSTD have tended to focus more on the biological than physical sciences and it is important that these areas integrate more, especially in view of the increasingly biological focus to materials applications. The meeting that was held at Birmingham gave delegates the opportunity to consider developments in materials science education within the curriculum.

The picture above shows both the speakers and members of the ABSTD.  L to R - Robert Hill, Paul Anderson, (Both QMUL), Josie Beeley (Glasgow), Mangala Patel (QMUL), Paul Hatton (Sheffield) Owen Addison and Will Palin (Birmingham).  The first session of the afternoon covered "Materials Sciences in the Dental Curriculum" whilst the second discussed "New Horizons in Dental Materials".

Delegates to the meeting came from around the country and there were a few familiar faces included Alistair Sloan who is shown here with Paul Cooper and Owen Addison. Well done to all at Birmingham who organised a successful meeting in this important area of teaching in the dental curriculum.

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Welcome back
......to another term and an exciting one at that.  Sorry the update comes on the second day but the first day was exceptionally busy for many people including the Curriculum team.  There was the small matter of the second year examinations to be done and the students were milling around the school waiting for their results to be released yesterday evening.  The Final Years are getting ready for the final push towards finals.  Their emails and conversation ranges from presentation cases to finals questions. There is also the small matter of the West Midlands VT list being announced this week.  For those staff who are acting as referees then there are references to be done.  In fact Your Blogger has several CVs and testimonials to either look through or sign and I know that this is repeated across many other members of staffs' desks.  Just paid my cheques for the Graduation Dinner as well as the Dental Hospital Ball.  The Graduation dinner is being held at the Marriot Forest Of Arden Hotel which will be something to look forward to in July. 

And I still have not mentioned the most important event of the year so far taking place in May, the release of the new Star Trek movie.  Sorry but there is also life outside dentistry!  Just to get you thinking of all the nice weather out there and for those looking forward to the forthcoming holidays here is a rather nice sunset from a foreign warm climate.  So Welcome back and stay tuned for more updates.

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