Meet the Team

Dedicated to making people smile.

Hello! We are the tooth fairies, a team of Materials Science and Engineering students working with Glidewell Dental labs. Our goal is to create natural-looking dental implants by altering the material properties of dental zirconia. By increasing the translucency of 3 mol percent tetragonal zirconia polycrystal (3Y-TZP), we can mimic the optical properties of natural teeth. Each of us are dedicated to providing materials anaylsis of dental zirconia samples with increased translucency in order to obtain important data that will further understanding of engineering materials that have a profound effect on the lives of people needing dental implants.

Edgar Valladares

Team Leader

I am a 4th year Materials Science and Engineering student set to graduate in June 2022. I have two roles in this project which are team lead and X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) analyst. XRD is a characterization technique that allows for identification of a material by giving information such as phases of the material. As the team lead, I oversee the project to ensure its progression and manage communication with faculty and industry mentors. As an XRD analyst, I perform XRD on samples of zirconia to differentiate its different phases.

Email: edvallad1@uci.edu

Luz Gomez

Hello! My name is Luz Gomez. I am a fourth year Material Science and Engineering Student at UCI. I am working towards improving the esthetics of 3Y-TZP dental zirconia using a gradient solution. I work on imaging and analyzing the grain size of our dental restorations using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The analysis of grain size confirms the different phases in the dental restoration.

Email: lzgomez@uci.edu

Jason Li

I am a Materials Science and Engineering student set to graduate in June 2022. My role in this project is to work with my team to manufacture and produce our dental restorations and perform X-Ray Diffraction (XRD) characterization and data analysis of our produced dental restorations.

Email: jlli2@uci.edu

Marlon Pinedo

Hello, I am a 4th year MSE major working on taking nanoidentation data. This data will provide use more information on how the gradient effect affects the materials properties on different regions of the zirconia samples. I also help the team with graphing and making parts with autoCAD.

Email: marlonp@uci.edu

Lynh Tran

Hi! I act as the scribe of the group, taking notes on our meetings and progress. In addition, I am working on taking nanoindentation data. This type of data provides several important information on materials properties such as hardness, fracture toughness and Young's modulus.

Email: lynhmt@uci.edu

Alina Vizcaya

Hello! I am working on performing scanning electron microscopy on our control and coated dental restoration samples. This technique will be used to perform grain size analysis on three critical regions of our sample, to examine how phase changes affect grain structure.

Email: avizcaya@uci.edu

Special Thanks to our Supporters

Dr. Jae Won Kim: Industry mentor from Glidewell Labratories

Dr. Chris Hoo: Faculty mentor

Dr. David Kisailus: Faculty mentor

The MSE 189/BME 180 Faculty and the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program