12 members of the Kaspar Lab presented poster presentations at the 2025 The Ohio State University College of Dentistry Research Day.
In addition, several members took home awards for their efforts:
Nicole Fleming – Alumni Research Achievement Award, will be going to the Hinman Student Research Symposium as a part of this prize (held in Fall 2025)
Robbie Bettinger – Alumni Research Merit Award, will be going to the Hinman Student Research Symposium as a part of this prize
3rd Place Dental Student Award for Research Day 2025
Jarett Pittman — ADA Dentsply Award, will be going to the 2026 IADR/AADOCR General Meeting to compete in the Student Competition for Advancing Dental Research and its Application (SCADA) Competition (held next March 2026)
2nd Place Dental Student Award for Research Day 2025
Jacob Harris — 1st Place PhD/Resident Student Award for Research Day 2025
Award winners from the Kaspar Lab at the 2025 College of Dentistry Research Day
The full presenters and titles are listed below:
DDS Student Category
Robbie Bettinger, D2 – Identification of genes that impacts fitness in Streptococcus gordonii (Award winner)
Nicole Fleming, D3 – Efficacy of oral healthcare antimicrobials on Streptococcus mutans clinical isolates (Award winner)
Jarett Pittman, D2 – Chlorhexidine tolerance in Streptococcus mutans isolates at a single-cell level (Award winner)
Iris Shin, D2 – Streptococcus sanguinis carbohydrate utilization pathways impacts growth with Streptococcus mutans
Jacob Tuckerman, D3 – Assessing prevalence of viroid-like colonists in commensal oral streptococci
PhD/ Resident Category
Jacob Harris, 2nd year PhD – Identification of Streptococcus mutans conditionally essential genes within human saliva
Staff Category
Alyssa Deever – New fluorescent strains of oral streptococci species
Undergraduate Category
Hamsika Arnipalli, Junior – Impacts of carbohydrates and metabolites on Rothia dentocariosa growth rates
Allen Choi, Senior – Human saliva modifies the behaviors of oral bacteria
Sarah Klingerman, Senior – Transformation efficiency of Streptococcus oralis: optimizing competence conditions
Huizhen Lim, Junior – Rothia dentocariosa antagonism of oral streptococci in coculture
Isabella Williams, Senior – Streptococcus mitis inhibits Streptococcus mutans biofilms via hydrogen peroxide production
Congrats to all of our presenters for their hard work this past year!