Ana Bedran-Russo

Ana Bedran-Russo (née Ana Karina Bedran de Castro) is Associate Dean for Research and Professor and Department Head of the Department of Oral Biology and at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Dentistry.

Life
Originally from Brazil, Bedran-Russo earned her DDS at the Araçatuba School of Dentistry in São Paulo; her MS in operative dentistry/clinical sciences at Piracicaba; and her PhD in dental material sciences at Piracicaba. She came to the United States in 2001 as a visiting research scholar to develop research in biomaterials at University of North Carolina.

Bedran-Russo taught at the University of Campinas's Piracicaba School of Dentistry in Brazil, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Dentistry.

As a clinician-scientist, she holds research grants from federal, institutional and association sources. She has over 130 scientific peer reviewed papers and over 170 abstracts. She has served the International Association for Dental Research and the American Dental Association. She has received the 2014 UIC Researcher of the Year award and the 2021 Way Klingler Research Award. She is a 2018 alumna of the Hedwig van Ameringen Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program.

She is a clinician-scientist that is highly recognized in the field of dental biomaterials. She has published in the areas of structural, mechanical, and compositional studies of dentin and interfaces between dental tissues and dental biomaterials. She pioneered the use of bioinspired strategies to mimic native reinforcement mechanisms various hierarchical levels of the extracellular matrix organization and mediate the biomechanics and biostability of dentin. Among these strategies, her research has utilized nature-derived oligomeric proanthocyanidins as interventional biomaterials, work that has gained attention beyond the field of dentistry. She has received research funding support from the National Institutes of Health, foundation awards, and corporate contracts. She has published over 150 manuscripts and four book chapters.

Private life
Her husband, Stephen Russo, is a periodontist.