IADR John A. Gray Fellowship to Navdeep Kaur Brar, University of Oslo, Norway

2021 IADR John A. Gray Fellowship is presented to Navdep Kaur Brar, University of Oslo, Norway. Fellwoship is announced during the the 99th General Session of the IADR, the 50th Meeting of the AADR and the 45th Meeting of the CADR, which was organized as an online meeting due to the COVID-19 restrictions.

Navdeep is working as a doctoral research fellow at the Institute of oral Biology, at the University of Oslo. She received her Master’s degree in Odontology in 2015 from the Faculty of Dentistry, University of Oslo, and have since then practiced as an authorized dentist. She joined Professor Petersen’s laboratory as a PhD candidate at the Institute of oral Biology, the University of Oslo in 2020. Her principal supervisor is Professor Fernanda C. Petersen. Co-supervisors are Dr. Roger Junges, Dr. Sudhanshu Shekar and Professor Anders Håkansson.

Her research project is related to one of the biggest challenges we are facing today, the antimicrobial resistance crisis. The incidence of antimicrobial resistance is increasing both among pathogenic organisms and among bacterial species of the normal flora in the oral cavity. Professor Håkansson’s laboratory at Lund University, Sweden, has discovered a molecule from breastmilk, HAMLET, with direct antibacterial activity against selected pathogens that also serves to reduce antibiotic- resistance development. Research is mainly focused on the impact of antibiotics on the Human Oral microbiome, and how HAMLET, a human protein-lipid complex may prevent microbiome perturbations led by antibiotics exposure.