This speaker who holds international repute as a periodontist, educator, researcher and administrator, was appointed director of the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR) in August, 2011. As director of NIDCR, Dr. Somerman oversees a budget of $410 million and leads a staff of more than 400 researchers and administrators on the NIH campus as well as hundreds of grantees at universities, medical schools, dental schools, and other research institutions. NIDCR-supported scientists conduct research on the full spectrum of topics related to oral, dental, and craniofacial health and disease. Prior to her appointment, Dr. Somerman had been dean of the University of Washington School of Dentistry since 2002. She was also Professor of Periodontics at the university. Before becoming dean, Dr. Somerman was Associate Dean for Research at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, from 2001-2002, as well as Professor in the Department of Periodontics/Prevention/Geriatrics. She chaired that department from 1995-2000 and was concurrently a professor in the Department of Pharmacology at the University of Michigan Medical School. From 1984 to 1990, she was an Assistant Professor and later an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland College of Dentistry in the departments of Periodontics and Pharmacology. In the early 1980s, she was a Staff Fellow at the National Institutes of Health/National Institute of Dental Research (NIH/NCDR). There, she served first in the Developmental Biology and Anomalies Laboratory and then in the Laboratory of the Clinical Investigations and Patient Care Branch.
Dr. Somerman earned her B.A. in biology from New York University and her M.S. in environmental health from Hunter College. She returned to NYU in 1975 to earn her D.D.S. degree, and then specialized in periodontology and pharmacology at the Eastman Dental Center and University in Rochester, NY, earning in a certificate in periodontics (1978) and a Ph.D. in pharmacology (1980).
A long-time practicing clinician, Dr. Somerman is also an active researcher. She has focused on defining the key regulators controlling development and maintenance and regeneration of tissues that form the dental-oral-craniofacial complex. In addition, she studies the appropriate cells, genes (factors), and scaffolds needed to rebuild periodontal structures lost through disease. She receives research funding from NIH and from the private sector.
