Dental school welcomes new research faculty members
Oonagh Loughran, B.S., Ph.D., recently joined the VCU School of Dentistry as director of research management. She will help promote and develop research with the school along with providing support in the expansion of research programs, the development and implementation of new research training programs and the enhancement of grant proposal submission and review processes. Opportunities in translational research and development of commercial opportunities also will be explored.
Loughran completed her graduate studies at University College Dublin, Ireland followed by several years of postdoctoral research at the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research in Glasgow, Scotland and the University of Glasgow where her research focused on identifying molecular pathways for drug targeting in cancer. More recently, she worked in both industry and government where she managed a number of collaborative multidisciplinary research consortia and was involved in the commercialization of academic research. She would like to translate this latter experience to faculty and students who may have ideas or products they would like to commercialize.
Iain Morgan, B.S., Ph.D., was named the new director of the VCU Philips Institute and chair of the Department of Oral and Craniofacial Molecular Biology at the VCU School of Dentistry. As director and chair, Morgan will work closely with the VCU Massey Cancer Center and will be responsible for promoting the existing research programs of the Philips Institute, which include cancer and infectious diseases as they relate to the oral cavity. He aims to build a center of excellence in oral health research that will be recognized for its fundamental research into, and novel therapeutic approaches to, diseases of the oral cavity.
Morgan attended the Beatson Institute for Cancer Research for graduate school and then carried out his postdoctoral research at the Norris Comprehensive Cancer Center at the University of Southern California as well as the Scripps Research Institute in California. He worked for a leading U.K. biotech company, Celltech Therapeutics, before returning to the Beatson Institute and then the University of Glasgow. Morgan’s recent research has centered on the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) with the goal of developing novel therapeutics to intervene in the HPV life cycle to reduce disease burden from this pathogen and to increase understanding of cellular transcription and replication, key processes that often go wrong in cancers.
Please join us in welcoming Dr. Loughran and Dr. Morgan to the U.S. and to the VCU School of Dentistry!
Categories Schoolwide News