Applied AI in Oral Health Summer Institute
Learn how to turn data into intelligence on July 11 and 12, 2025, with the Mike Petryk School of Dentistry. Sponsored by the Network for Canadian Oral Health Research (NCOHR).
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Event details | Schedule | Speakers
Event details
July 11 and 12, 2025, in Edmonton, Alberta
Students — $100 | Faculty and Clinicians — $300
Registration deadline: July 9, 2025
* This number is an estimate. Your regulatory body will issue the credits.
We will offer applied and methodological AI training through examples and the application of coding techniques to solve challenges in dental research. This program is designed for interested dental researchers and students with no previous experience in AI who wish to pursue this dimension of research.
Note: Attendees must be members of NCOHR. Membership is free.
Travel subsidy
The first 10 registrations may be eligible to have their travel to and from their home institution to the University of Alberta reimbursed, up to $500. Reimbursement will be made after the event if it meets the directive requirements. Receipts and boarding passes must be kept and submitted at the event. Note: accommodations will not be eligible.
Travel reimbursement must meet the requirements of the Joint Council Travel Directive to be eligible, and is sponsored by NCOHR.
What you will learn
This conference will offer active learning sessions in the mornings and labs with hands-on, project-based learning in the afternoons.
Mornings will feature interactive lectures, while afternoons will focus on project-based labs with the learning objectives of:
- Understanding the core concepts of AI and machine learning in dentistry
- Applying AI tools for clinical decision support and predictive analytics
- Using natural language processing (NLP) for chart mining and research
- Explore current trends and future directions of AI in oral health
- Gain hands-on experience in image preprocessing, annotation, and running basic AI pipelines using Google Colab
By the end of the program, participants will be equipped to begin integrating AI into their research and practice.
Schedule
Speakers
Dr. Fabiana Almeida
Clinician Scientist & Assistant Professor
Dr. Almeida, DDS, MSc, PhD, is a clinician scientist and assistant professor at the Mike Petryk School of Dentistry, University of Alberta. She teaches oral radiology to both undergraduate and graduate students and also serves
Almeida's research program focuses on advanced imaging technologies (CBCT, MRI and Ultrasound) and innovation to improve the diagnosis of oral and maxillofacial conditions. She is increasingly focused on AI-driven image analysis and has led the development of an AI model to assist in identifying TMJ disorders in MRI images. By integrating clinical diagnosis expertise with innovation, her research aims to enhance diagnostic imaging, support clinical decision-making, and ultimately improve patient outcomes in oral health care.
Dr. Nazila Ameli
Clinical Assistant Professor
Dr. Ameli, DDS, MSc, PhD, is an accomplished orthodontist with over seven years of experience as a faculty professor. She earned her PhD in 2024, focusing on the applications of artificial intelligence in dentistry and oral health.
Since beginning her doctoral program in 2021, Ameli has published seven peer-reviewed papers specifically in the fields of machine learning and AI in dentistry and is involved in more than seven AI-related projects. Her research bridges both text and image data analysis to advance diagnostic and clinical decision-making in oral health care. Ameli currently serves as an academic teaching staff member at the University of Alberta, where she contributes to both clinical education and research.
In addition, she has served for two consecutive years as the president of the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Student Society (AIMSS), leading initiatives to integrate cutting-edge technologies into healthcare and enhance patient outcomes.
Dr. Maryam Amin
ASSOCIATE CHAIR RESEARCH
Dr. Amin, DMD, MSc, PhD, is a professor, associate chair of research, and director of the dentistry graduate program at the University of Alberta’s Mike Petryk School of Dentistry, where she also holds the Alberta Dental Association and College Clinical Dentistry Research Chair.
She earned her DMD degree in Iran and completed both her MSc and PhD at the University of British Columbia (UBC). Deeply committed to academic excellence, she also completed a postdoctoral fellowship in Health Education and a certificate in "Teaching in Higher Education" at UBC, and was later awarded the American Dental Education Association (ADEA) Gies Foundation Scholarship to complete the prestigious ADEA Leadership Institute program.
Dr. Amin's research program focuses on the social and behavioral aspects of oral health, specifically investigating how psychosocial, community, and societal factors influence dental care access among disadvantaged populations. Her lab actively leverages electronic health data and artificial intelligence to identify risk factors, address oral health inequalities, and design innovative public health promotion strategies. As a dedicated educator and administrator, Dr. Amin is deeply committed to fostering the next generation of researchers. She actively mentors and supervises undergraduate, graduate (MSc and Ph.), and post-doctoral students, providing them with advanced, hands-on training in dental public health, health informatics, and clinical research methodologies to prepare them for successful careers in academia, clinical practice, and public policy."
Dr. Tahereh Firoozi
Assistant Clinical Professor
Dr. Firoozi, PhD, is an assistant clinical professor at the Mike Petryk School of Dentistry at the University of Alberta. She earned her first PhD in applied linguistics in 2019 and later completed a second PhD in measurement, evaluation, and data science (MEDS) in 2023.
Firoozi's interdisciplinary background in linguistics and data science has shaped her expertise in computational linguistics and transformer-based approaches to text mining. She was also awarded a two-year postdoctoral research fellowship by Alberta Innovates at the Mike Petryk School of Dentistry. Her current research focuses on the application of transformer-based models in dental and medical text mining, as well as their use in health professions education.
Dr. Hollis Lai
Professor
Dr. Lai, PhD, MBA, MEd, is a professor with the Mike Petryk School of Dentistry and is a university alumnus of the Faculty of Education and the School of Business.
His research interest is in analytics and psychometrics. His team has developed many learning solutions used throughout the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. He co-developed the method for automatic time generation that is now being used by testing agencies around the world.
He splits his time between the Undergraduate Medical Education office and the ERSU. His research interests include developing intelligent applications, learning sciences, and adopting analytic methods in oral health research. His focus within the Unit is to engage in and support educational research, with a focus on quantitative methods, analytics, and machine learning.
In 2024, Lai was recognized with the David Cook Award for contribution to medical education at the University of Alberta and in 2016 was awarded the annual award by the National Council for Measurement in Education.
Dr. Manuel Oscar Lagravère Vich
Director, orthodontic graduate program
Dr. Lagravère, DDS, MSc, PhD, was born in Lima, Peru, where he completed his degree in dental science (2000) and masters in science (2003) at the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia.
After this, he moved to Edmonton to pursue a PhD in orthodontic which was completed in July 2009 in the University of Alberta. Since then, Lagravère has moved in the faculty ranks being promoted to tenured-professor in orthodontics since July 2023 where he is involved in teaching orthodontics to undergraduates and postgraduates students.
During his time in teaching and doing research, Lagravère has won several awards and has published over 160 papers in important scientific journals. In July 2025, he became the director of the orthodontic graduate program at the University of Alberta.
Presently, he runs several clinical trials involving orthodontic treatments and its impact on airway, skeletal, and dental changes. In several of these trials, he works jointly with universities from the US, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Mexico. His research mainly focuses on the areas of maxillary expansion, bone-anchored mechanics, and three-dimensional analysis. He is also the Director of the Applied Oral Health Research Unit.
Dr. Camila Pacheco Pereira
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR & ORAL AND MAXILLOFACIAL RADIOLOGIST SPECIALIST
Dr. Pacheco-Pereira, DDS, MBA, MSc, MS, PHD, FRCDC, is one of the few board-certified oral and maxillofacial radiologists in Alberta. She leads the Advanced Imaging Centre at the University of Alberta.
With over 90 peer-reviewed publications, her research focuses on 2D and 3D imaging applications, knowledge translation in dental imaging, and metrics related to patient satisfaction with oral health care. Embracing innovation and collaboration, she explores the use of cone beam computed tomography (CBCT) and alternative imaging tools to advance digital dentistry. Pacheco-Pereira is committed to integrating augmented intelligence into dental imaging, promoting knowledge translation in oral radiology, and advancing education by emphasizing imaging justification and the appropriate use of imaging modalities in dentistry.
Pacheco-Pereira completed her dentistry studies in Brazil. After finishing dental school, she slowly but surely realized that her strong interests were related to oral health diagnosis. Accordingly, she completed an oral radiology specialty program. Her interests are also related to health services delivery, which led to the completion of her masters in business administration with a specialization in health management. This experience opened her mind to the administrative side of dentistry.
Having been in Alberta since 2013, Pacheco-Pereira completed a masters in dentistry program at the University of Alberta and she is proud to be an alumni of the school where she teaches today. She is involved with DDS, dental hygiene, undergraduate and graduate programs in addition to the radiology clinic.
Her interest is focused on generating good translational research. With a substantial number of scientific papers in evidence-based dentistry, patient and student satisfaction/blended learning, and oral maxillofacial related topics, Pacheco-Pereira is an active and awarded member of academia. She is a collaborator in a number of dental evidence-based studies to systematic review topics that need to be translated to the practitioner. Another research interest of hers is the variation in the trabecular bone pattern in conventional and advanced imaging.
Dr. Kumaradevan Punithakumarn
Associate Professor, Department of Radiology
Dr. Punithakumar, BScEng, MASc, PhD, received his BScEng (first class honours) in electronic and telecommunication engineering from the University of Moratuwa, and his MASc and PhD in electrical and computer engineering from McMaster University.
From 2008 to 2012, he worked as an imaging research scientist at GE Healthcare, Canada. He is currently an associate professor in the Department of Radiology and Diagnostic Imaging at the University of Alberta and holds the Alberta Health Services chair in diagnostic imaging. He also serves as the operational and computational director at the Servier Virtual Cardiac Centre, Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute.
Over the years, Punithakumar has had the opportunity to mentor more than 80 trainees, including postdoctoral fellows and PhD, MSc, medical, and undergraduate students, primarily in the areas of medical image computing and visualization. His work has resulted in over 70 peer-reviewed journal articles, a similar number of conference proceedings, and several patents. He has been recognized with the Industrial Research and Development Fellowship from NSERC in 2008, the IEEE Access Outstanding Associate Editor Award in 2018, and each year from 2020 to 2024.
