We were very fortunate to host Fabian Cieplik over the last week or so. Fabian was awarded the prestigious IADR STAR Network Academy Fellowship, 2018. This award is designed to allow talented researchers to visit a laboratory in the host country of the annual IADR General Session, which was held in London this year. The IADR meeting itself is a fantastic opportunity to learn about the latest developments in Dental Research and to network with colleagues in the field. By hosting Fabian’s visit, we hope to establish new collaborations between the Centre for Oral Health Research at Newcastle and Fabian’s host institution, the University Hospital Regensburg, Germany.

We had some great discussions with Fabian to think about how we might collaborate in future, and hopefully we will get something off the ground before too long. Fabian was also able to see our research facilities and to meet many of the other researchers in the COHR. On his last day here he gave an excellent presentation which was very well received by both clinical and non-clinical researchers here. His work on antimicrobial photodynamic therapy has clear translational potential for the clinic. We will look forward to working together in future!