School of Dentistry awardee of 2025 Presidential Excellence Award
Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï’s vice president for academic, faculty and student affairs, Jacqueline Mok, PhD, and Danielle McDavid, PHR, strategic human resources partner in the Office of Human Resources, were selected as this year’s selection committee for the 2025 Presidential Excellence Award winners. This February, they announced this year’s winners. Among those honorees was an exceptional member from the School of Dentistry, who will be celebrated at a special awards dinner with a plaque and a cash award in April.
, Professor, Department of Endodontics, researcher for the Center for Pain Therapeutics and Addiction Research, will be presented with the Distinguished Senior Research Scholar Award.
Armen Akopian, PhD, is a 29-year veteran of pain research with a specific interest in why standard analgesics have sex- and age-dependent efficiency; and importantly, why the chronicity of pain conditions is affected by sex and age. Akopian’s lab uses a multidisciplinary research approach that includes electrophysiology, behavioral physiology, anatomy, pharmacology, biochemistry and cell biology.
In 2023, the School of Dentistry was awarded a five-year, $9.8 million RE-JOIN grant from the National Institutes of Health to discover how sensory neurons in the jaw joint and mastication muscles influence and create pain, which could lead to safer drug alternatives to opioid painkillers while helping to curb addiction. Akopian is the principal investigator and project leader of the RE-JOIN grant.
We hope you will join us as our School celebrates Dr. Akopian on a job well done and for his commitment to the mission and core values of Íø±¬³Ô¹Ï.
To see the full list of the 2025 Presidential Excellence Awards recipients, please .