Meet the Speakers
Nathaniel Treister, DMD, DMSc
Dr. Treister is an oral medicine specialist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) and Clinical Director of Oral Medicine and Oral Oncology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) in Boston, Massachusetts, and Associate Professor of Oral Medicine at Harvard School of Dental Medicine. He is board certified in Oral Medicine and practices at BWH, DFCI, Boston Children’s Hospital, and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, with special interest in oral mucosal diseases, salivary gland diseases, orofacial pain disorders, and oral complications in cancer patients.
Judith Raber-Durlacher, DDS, PhD
Dr. Raber-Durlacher is a former Associate Professor at the Academic Centre for Dentistry Amsterdam (ACTA) and Amsterdam University Medical Center, where she continues to volunteer her time. She has been involved in research and clinical care related to oral complications in cancer patients (e.g., mucositis, infections, graft-versus-host disease (GVHD)). She is a longstanding member of MASCC/ISOO and has held leadership positions in these organizations, including serving as the President of ISOO, and took part in developing guidelines and position papers of the Mucositis and Oral Care Study Groups. She is now “semi-retired”, but still involved in research projects, including the OraStem study on oral complications in hematopoietic cell transplantation recipients.
Scott Benjamin, DDS
Dr. Benjamin is an internationally recognized expert, lecturer, and trainer on Dental Lasers, Oral Cancer and Advanced Dental Technologies and is in private practice in rural upstate New York where he utilizes several lasers of many different wavelengths on an everyday basis. He is an Associate Clinical Professor at Eastman Institute for Oral Health. Scott is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Laser Institute of America (LIA), Chairman of the ADA Standards’ Working Group on Dental Lasers, a member of ANSI z136 Committee on Laser Safety, and is a Past-President of the Academy of Laser Dentistry.
Praveen Arany, BDS, MDS, MMSc, PhD
Dr. Arany is an Associate Professor of Oral Biology at the University of Buffalo School of Dental Medicine. He has adjunct appointments in Surgery, Biomedical Engineering, Nursing, and Physical Therapy. He served as President of the North American Association for Photobiomodulation Therapy (NAALT) and later as President of the World Association for Photobiomodulation Therapy (WALT). He has published over 125 peer-reviewed articles, recipient of numerous awards, and active member of organizations promoting lasers and photobiomodulation (WALT, NAALT, Optica, SPIE). Dr. Arany’s work has been featured in mainstream media such as Fox news, CNN, BBC, and Reuters.
Sharon Elad, DMD, MSc
Dr. Elad is a Professor of Dentistry at the University of Rochester, where she is Chair of the Division of Oral Medicine at the Eastman Institute for Oral Health, and a Principal Consultant for Hospital Dentistry at University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, USA. Previously, Dr. Elad served as the Chair of the Mucositis Study Group of MASCC/ISOO and led the development of international clinical practice guidelines about mucositis. Currently, Dr. Elad serves as the Chair of the Oral Care Study Group of MASCC/ISOO. Dr. Elad is involved in research collaborations on topics interlacing oral medicine, hematology/oncology, and dentistry, and she is the site PI for NIH-funded research.