Junior faculty awarded endodontic educator fellowship award

Assistant professor Annie Shrestha has been awarded the Endodontic Educator Fellowship Award from the American Association of Endodontics Foundation (AAEF).

The prestigious award, valued at $50,000 U.S. per year for five years, recognizes the critical role that educators play in strengthening the endodontic specialty. The chosen recipient is in the first five years of his or her teaching career and intends to remain in academia.

“It is a huge honour to be recognized for your role,” says Shrestha, who became an assistant professor of endodontics in 2017 after completing both her PhD (2013) and her MSc in endodontics (2017) at the Faculty.

“I want to inspire young professionals to be involved in academics,” says Shrestha of her goals as an educator, which includes, at the top of her list, teaching empathy. “I want the younger generation to look at the patient as a whole, not just one tooth, and to impact the overall quality of life as a health care professional.”                  

Aside from her teaching, Shrestha is concurrently conducting research with Toronto General Hospital's Dr. Daniel Winer on immune modulation. In the long term, Shrestha hopes that immunotherapies can lead to important new discoveries in modulating cells to treat inflammation or disease.

The award will be formally announced at the annual meeting of the American Association of Endodontics in the spring of 2019, to be held in Montreal.