Researcher and Lecturer in Orthodontics, Rishma Shah, has been awarded a two-year Fellowship by the Faculty of Dental Surgery of the Royal College of Surgeons of England.

The prestigious award will support Miss Shah's ongoing research, begun during her postgraduate studies, into the creation of in vitro craniofacial skeletal muscle tissue for use in the development of novel therapies to treat craniofacial deformities such as cleft lip and palate, with the ultimate aim of providing tissue for use in facial implants to replace muscle tissue deficiencies.

It is anticipated that the Fellowship grant will allow Miss Shah to find a suitable way of integrating biologically engineered craniofacial muscle with tendon and bone attachments, which would provide a valuable contribution to the field.