Part of the UT Health San Antonio.
Directors
Ken Hargreaves, DDS, PhD
Program Director, DDS/PhD Track Director
Professor
Endodontics
Dr. Hargreaves serves as the Director of the COSTAR Program. He has been affiliated with COSTAR since its inception and has directed/co-directed the DDS/PhD track for over 17 years. He is a Professor and Chair in the Department of Endodontics. Dr. Hargreaves is also a professor in the Department of Pharmacology, Department of Physiology and Department of Surgery at the UT Health San Antonio Long School of Medicine. His area of research is in neuropharmacology of peripheral nociceptors in preclinical models and clinical orofacial pain conditions.
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Stephen E. Harris, PhD
Prostdoctoral Track Director
Professor
Periodontics
Dr. Harris is the Director of the Postdoctoral Fellow Track. He is a Professor and Director of Research in the Department of Periodontics. He is also a professor in the Department of Cellular & Structural Biology at the UT Health San Antonio Long School of Medicine. His main research interests are gene regulation of osteocytes and their role in mechanical loading and bone morphogenetic protein in bone biology using mouse transgenic and conditional knock-out models, linked to high-throughput systems biology approaches.
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Brian Wickes, PhD
PhD Track Director
Professor
Microbiology, Immunology & Molecular Genetics
Dr. Wickes is an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Molecular Genetics, Director of the Advanced Nucleic Acids Core Facility, and Research Director of the San Antonio Center for Medical Mycology. Dr. Wickes directs the PhD track of COSTAR. His research interest is in the biology and molecular biology of medically important fungi. His laboratory mostly studies Cryptococcus neoformans, a basidiomycetous yeast that is closely related to mushrooms and a number of plant pathogens. Their major interest in C. neoformans concerns the role that mating plays in virulence. Other studies include Candida albicans and Aspergillus fumigatus.
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Cara Gonzales, DDS, PhD
Postdoctoral Track Director
Associate Professor
Comprehensive Dentistry
Dr. Gonzales is a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Comprehensive Dentistry. She is also a professor in the Department of Otolaryngology at the UT Health San Antonio Long School of Medicine. She is the Co-Director of the COSTAR Program and co-directs the DDS/PhD track. Her research interests include the characterization of novel mechanisms of oral cancer pain and drug development to treat oral cancer and cancer-related pain.
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Shivani Ruparel, PhD
Postdoctoral Track Director
Associate Professor
Endodontics
Dr. Ruparel is an Associate Director in the Department of Endodontics, and her area of expertise is in tumorgenesis of oral squamous cell carcinomas. She developed the first in vitro model of isolated tongue-nerve preparations to determine how oral tumors activate/sensitize trigeminal nociceptive neurons.
Research profile
Contact Info:
Kenneth Hargreaves, DDS, PhD
hargreaves@uthscsa.edu
(210) 567-3388