Maria Kassapidou is a Swedish clinician and researcher who has divided her time between NIOM where she has been a visiting researcher, the department of Prosthodontics and Dental Materials Science at the University of Gothenburg where she has been enrolled in a doctoral program, and the Institute for Postgraduate Dental Education in Jönköping where she is a clinical specialist in Prosthodontics.
For the last months she has used her expertise in collaboration with NIOM’s senior engineers Else Morisbak and Morten Syverud to study different cobalt-chromium alloys used in fixed prostheses and compare them to titanium alloys. Before she returned to Jönköping, she took time to summarize her experience as a visiting researcher.
How would you sum up being a visiting researcher at NIOM?
It has been great to be at NIOM. The staff has been helpful and competent, I’ve worked with high-quality equipment and at a perfect central location!
What has your project been about?
I have worked on parts two and three of my Ph.D. research: Co-Cr alloys, manufactured by four different techniques: casting, milling, milling before sintering and powder metallurgical laser sintering. I have investigated in-vitro properties such as corrosion, cytotoxicity, hardness and tensile strength.
You’re first and foremost a clinician. How was it to work as a lab researcher?
It has been a challenge for me working at a lab because I am clinician. But this is the best place to test all the materials used in patients’ oral cavities. With the great help of Morten and Else we managed to do all the planned tests without any problems! I have collected all the necessary data and the preliminary results are really interesting. I look forward to returning home and plan to publish the results as soon as possible.
