Dr. Christina Nicholas Awarded a National Institute of Justice Grant
Dr. Christina Nicholas Awarded a National Institute of Justice Grant Heading link
Dr. Christina Nicholas (Assistant Professor in Department of Orthodontics and Director of MS Oral Science Program) has been awarded a National Institute of Justice grant titled “DENTAGE: A multi-component subadult dental age estimation method”. The Department of Orthodontics and the College of Dentistry community congratulate Dr. Nicholas and her co-investigators (Dr. Efthymia Nikita from Cyprus Institute and Dr. James Sciote from Temple University) and collaborators (Dr. Mike Colvard from UIC and Dr. Jeff Godel from Temple University) on this significant achievement.
About the project: The dentition gives clues to children’s chronological ages and relative growth status. In dentistry, dental radiographs are used to assess whether dental development is on schedule; in forensic contexts, the dentition provides the best estimate for age-at-death. Current dental age assessment approaches suffer from key deficiencies due to secular change, inability to account for environmental factors which influence dental development timing, and the lack of contemporary, population-specific formulae. The DENTAGE project seeks to develop improved methods which have the ability to account for potentially important variables such as sex, ancestry, socioeconomic status, and body mass index.