Now I know there may be a few people out there wondering just who is Shirley Glasstone Hughes and what does the Trust Fund do? Well, for those of you who are interested, Shirley was a BDA Member, a dentist and a keen researcher. Her research in embryology and tooth development led the way to her being awarded the Howard Mummery prize which was considered to be the Nobel prize for dentistry at the time. Shirley was the first scientist ever to grow living teeth in a testube, so it is no surprise that she was described as ahead of her time back in 1939.

When Shirley died in 1990, she very generously left her legacy with the BDA to set-up a Trust fund that would provide prizes or scholarships for dental research.

Since 1991 the Shirley Glasstone Hughes Trust Fund has funded dental research. To date 41 research projects have been funded worth in excess of £670,000.

In 2004 the Trustees of the Fund took the decision to evaluate the quality of research output from the Trust's spending and assess just how relevant it was to dentists in everyday practice.

The evaluation found that whilst the research funded was of scientific merit, greater efforts were needed to ensure that all future research addressed issues of direct relevance to dental practitioners.

The Trust Fund decided to focus its efforts and funds on research in primary dental care and this website is the means by which the Trust can fund research of real relevance to dentists out there working in practice. So this website has been set-up for you to help direct our research agenda.

We really value your opinion, so please take a moment to have a look around the site and vote on a particular question you would like to see research into. Our aim is to provide answers to the most popular questions in the form of state of the art statements which will be published on the website for you to access. Where we identify poor or little evidence available relating to a popular question, this will form the basis for commissioned research and a call for applications based on the most voted on question will be made. So get voting and watch this space...