Global Health Nexus, Summer 2001

NYU Dentistry in China

Last April a group of 57 faculty members and one student from NYU Dentistry, Sheila Soo, 03, set out on a two-week trip to China and Taiwan to visit dental schools and hospitals in Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Taipei, where they attended the 23rd Asian Pacific Dental Congress. The NYU Dentistry contingent was joined by a group of six faculty members from the Columbia University School of Dental and Oral Surgery, including Dean Allan J. Formicola.

Both the 23rd Asian Pacific Dental Congress and the trip were arranged by the Chinese American Dental Association (CADA), whose president, Dr. Yon Lai, is a member of the NYU Dentistry orthodontics faculty. Other CADA members on the faculty who were instrumental in arranging both events were Dr. Steven Lee (prosthodontics), Dr. Samuel Jung (cariology and operative dentistry), Dr. Kenneth Liao (endodontics), and Dr. Daniel Yen (general dentistry and management science).

The trip also offered an opportunity for NYU Dentistry to reaffirm the strong ties that exist between it and the dental schools at National Yang Ming University in Taipei and Shangahi Second Medical University in China, with both of whom NYU Dentistry signed formal affiliation agreements over a decade ago. As a symbol of the friendship between NYU Dentistry and each of the schools, Dean Alfano and the dean of the dental school at National Yang Ming University, Dr. Tzee-Hwai Lin, and the dean at the dental school at Shanghai Second Medical University, Dr. Zhi-yuan Zhang, re-signed their respective affiliation agreements.