Dr. Haitem Naas Receives the John W. Stanford New Investigator Award

Dr. Haitem Naas DMD AS 18 has been named the 2016 honoree of the John W. Stanford New Investigator Award. His research aims ultimately to integrate porcelain-fused-to-metal restorations to the computer-aided design and computer-aided manufacturing system.

The ADA Council on Scientific Affairs selected Dr. Haitem Naas for the award in recognition of his research project titled “Effect of Surface Treatment on Porcelain Bond Strength to Titanium.”

“Results of this study have shown that sandblasting, in combination with gold or titanium nitride coatings as a surface modification for titanium grade V, could make it a suitable substructure material for the porcelain-fused-to-metal restoration,” said Dr. Naas, who added that the inexpensive metal with “remarkable biocompatibility” is useful because “the CAD/CAM system that we use in dentistry nowadays is a subtractive manufacturing that leads to a significant waste of material making it unfeasible to use noble or high noble alloys to create a restoration by CAD/CAM due to the high cost.”

Dr. Naas has had other successes as a clinical researcher, including developing a new clinical technique related to creating a duplicate for almost any restoration as a backup when needed to avoid the need to redo restorations due to the clinical procedure. The technique was published in the Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry in 2014.

As a recipient of the Stanford New Investigator Award, Dr. Naas presented his winning project at the ADA Standards Committee on Dental Products annual meeting in San Francisco, California in March.

“Awards do mean a lot more when they come from your elite peers, and from highly prestigious organizations such as the American Dental Association,” Dr. Naas told the ADA News. “I will use this great honor as a reason to look forward towards greater and bigger success.”

The John W. Stanford New Investigator Award honors the contributions of the late Dr. Stanford, who died in February 2011 after a 40-year career with the ADA and is credited with establishing the ADA’s current standards program. The award acknowledges the original research that dental students and new dentists produce in the realm of dental standards.