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Faculty Interview Dr. Hwang
GEELSU HWANG, PhD
Assistant Professor, Division of Restorative Dentistry, Preventive & Restorative Sciences
Describe the role students play in your lab and their contribution.
Dr. Hwang has a team of post-docs, dental students, and undergraduate students working on several projects in his lab. He considers their lab a close-knit community, and every member uniquely contributes to the advancement and success of the lab’s research initiatives. It is essential that students are extremely careful during the experiments, as the wet-lab protocols are very sensitive. All students in the lab are trained, especially if they have little benchwork experience, proper training and skill acquisition can take some time.
Overall, Dr. Hwang appreciates students who are eager to learn, report honest results, and contribute to the collaborative learning atmosphere of his lab.
What has been your favorite research project or topic you investigated during your career so far?
Dr. Hwang enjoys studying how bacteria interact with different surfaces. His favorite topic of investigation was how environmental biofilm can facilitate wastewater cleaning and remediation of contaminated soil. His goal was to boost biofilm formation for beneficial purposes. Once joining Penn Dental, his work switched gears to making efforts to protect human health against the hazardous biofilm. He now continues to research and develop alternative strategies to disrupt biofilm formation, while overcoming the limitations of traditional strategies, and avoiding the potential for antimicrobial resistance.
What are you currently researching?
Currently, Dr. Hwang’s research in preventing biofilm formation follows two methodologies. The first proposes anti-adhesion surfaces, which reduces bacteria accumulation without disrupting normal microbiota or inducing resistance. The second involves an alternative antimicrobial strategy, which is an enzymatic approach targeting and disrupting the bond between bacteria, which has no cytotoxic effects while effective. Dr. Hwang’s vision is to develop more sustainable strategies to tackle biofilm-mediated oral diseases.
What was the greatest challenge you faced in your research career, and how did you overcome it?
Dr. Hwang has been working on traditional biofilm projects for much time, and only investigating bacterial behavior on surfaces at a microorganism level only. Then, he developed a novel research program centered around host-microbe interaction. When starting at Penn Dental Medicine, he was ultimately exploring a new area of study with dentistry. His research focused on investigating peri-implantitis and related diseases. In addition to the challenge of not having prior dental research experience, Dr. Hwang’s research presented the challenges of handling and testing of both human cells and microbes, while developing therapeutic strategies affecting the protection of human cells. Exploring a new area of research is always initially challenging, but with time and commitment, and familiarizing himself with clinical terminology, he learned more about the field and how to successfully apply his work.
