Dalhousie University: Dal dentistry researcher wins Mitacs Award for work that could help patients spend less time in the clinic

Brazilian dentist, orthodontist, and PhD candidate Cristiane Maucoski spent 11 months as a researcher in the Faculty of Dentistry at Dalhousie University. When she arrived in Halifax in September 2021, her goals were to improve her English, learn more research methodologies, and take advantage of laboratory facilities and equipment not available to her in Brazil.

Winning the Mitacs Award for Outstanding Innovation – International was not on her list of goals, but that’s exactly what she did on November 22, 2022, in Ottawa. It is, she says, “an incentive to keep working and keep learning”.

Dr. Maucoski received this prestigious award for her research on new high-powered curing lights and their ability to harden the over 800 million white composite fillings dentists place each year.

She describes her work as three-pronged. “I’m helping manufacturers get products to market quicker, dentists to make stronger, longer-lasting fillings, and patients to spend less time in the dental chair with less risk to their health caused by an incompletely cured filling.”