
Oral health has become a kind of canary in the coal mine when it comes to tiny changes that can lead to disease in the rest of the body — from colorectal cancer to diabetes. With this in mind, University of Florida students are broadening their academic scope to include a more interdisciplinary approach to learning that extends far beyond the mouth.
Since 2012, the UF College of Dentistry and the UF College of Medicine have teamed up to offer a combined D.M.D./Ph.D. program, which allows dental students to graduate with a Doctor of Dental Medicine, or D.M.D, degree in addition to a Ph.D. Students in the program not only learn how to manage and treat dental diseases, they also study biomedical science and examine how to improve oral health through research — skills that are invaluable for pursuing clinician/scientist jobs.
“Our program is geared to identify and train the next generation of academically focused dental researchers early on,” said Frank Gibson, Ph.D., the program’s coordinator.
Transforming the field

The majority of the program’s students go on to become prolific researchers in academic dentistry — like Natalie Atyeo, D.M.D., Ph.D., a current dental clinical research fellow at the National Institutes of Health, or NIH. Upon graduating from UF with a Ph.D. in biomedical sciences in addition to her D.M.D. degree, her final project focused on viral infections in the oral cavity — specifically, herpesviruses. Now, her research at the NIH has branched into viral infections in the salivary glands.
“There are a lot of viruses that we don’t really think about at all with relation to the mouth, but that we can actually find in the mouth and in the salivary glands,” Atyeo said. “I’ve been working on showing that saliva can be an excellent diagnostic tool for viral infections, as evidenced from illnesses like COVID-19.”
She credits UF’s Spring Synergy Research Symposium as one of the most impactful moments of her time in the D.M.D./Ph.D. program. Discussing her research with clinical researchers, clinicians, dental students, and residents helped Atyeo better position her research within the broader clinical context.
“Some of the students go on to academic residencies, and others go on to do clinical studies, but I feel like my time in the degree left me exceptionally well-prepared to understand the field from both a clinical perspective as well as a research-oriented one,” Atyeo said.
A comprehensive approach
Atyeo and other D.M.D./Ph.D. alumni have graduated from UF with a well-rounded understanding of dentistry and medicine. The vast majority of the program’s students whet their research training in oral and craniofacial research. Typically, the program tries to bring in at least one student per year, thanks to the NIH T90/R90 Comprehensive Training Program in Oral Biology headed by Jose Lemos, Ph.D., which provides financial support for the program.

“Our students are the people who will be wearing the dentist hat and the research hat,” Gibson said.
Numerous opportunities for Ph.D. research training are offered through the UF Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences within UF’s academic health center. The Ph.D. program consists of eight areas of research concentration: biochemistry and molecular biology, cancer biology, genetics, immunology and microbiology, molecular cell biology, physiology and functional genomics, pharmacology and therapeutics, and neuroscience (the latter is only available for current students).
“Oftentimes, dental schools offer an abbreviated Ph.D. program for students in the process of completing their combined degree,” Gibson said. “Here, however, students are held to the same high standard as non-D.M.D. students.”
Students complete three years of intensive D.M.D.-only training, following the track of their cohort, and then transition into the Ph.D. program. Then, those students usually earn doctoral degrees in about four years, while also completing their clinical work.
“This gives students an opportunity to become accustomed to learning how to walk around the halls and talk to people with the two different hats,” Gibson said. “Not to mention how they learn to manage their time effectively.”
But at the end of the day, Gibson’s job is to offer guidance.
“Watching each student succeed is easily the most rewarding aspect of my job,” Gibson said. “Seeing them grow and become stronger in their clinical training, as well as watching their critical-thinking skills develop and seeing where they land after the program, has always been incredibly exciting.”