Patty and Paul Levi Research Award

The Patty and Paul Levi Research Award provides two annual $5,000 awards recognizing completed research projects related to preventive periodontology or the oral-systemic link.

The research should be associated with prevention of periodontal or peri-implant diseases. Prevention can be defined broadly to include epidemiologic studies, studies involving teaching non-surgical periodontology to undergraduate students especially in the first year of their dental school training, non-surgical periodontal therapy, or providing information about periodontal diseases to the public especially to students. Levi Research Awardees are expected to submit their research to the American Academy of Periodontology requesting inclusion in the AAP Annual Meeting Program.

Eligibility

Two award recipients are selected each year: one periodontics resident and one predoctoral dental student being mentored by a periodontics faculty member in a dental school with a postdoctoral periodontics program.

Immediate family members of the AAP Foundation Board of Directors, officers, and selection committee members are not eligible to apply.

Application and Selection Procedure

Recipients are selected by an award committee appointed by the AAP Foundation president.

Application Deadline

June 1, 2027
Payment Schedule

A single $5,000 payment is made in February following the award presentation at the AAP Annual Meeting.
Founded

2016

“Receiving the Patty and Paul Levi Award was a great honor. It emphasizes the importance of prevention and how it is the best way to stop the progression of oral diseases, especially in perio.”

Joseph M. Montesano,
Harvard University

2024 Recipient – Patty and Paul Levi Research Award

Donor

Patty and Paul Levi

The AAP Foundation is grateful to Patty and Dr. Paul Levi and more than a hundred other donors who made this award possible.

Patty Levi has supported Paul for nearly fifty years in his endeavor to teach and practice periodontology. After they were married Paul entered the post-doctoral periodontal program Tufts University School of Dental Medicine (TUSDM). They moved to Burlington, Vermont where Paul taught at the University of Vermont Dental Hygiene School for 27 years. Paul then began teaching at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine, and he and Patty would drive to Boston for two days. After nine years of teaching at Harvard, Paul accepted a half-time position at TUSDM, while still teaching several days a year at Harvard. They are very honored to have this named award and feel strongly that it will enhance the knowledge of preventive dentistry and periodontology to students and to the public.

Selection Committee

Joan Otomo-Corgel
Orlando J. Abreu
Juhi Uttamani
William R Trahan
Carlos Parra

Recipients

2026	Jack (Yu-Chi) Cheng, Harvard University
2026	Vivian Ha, University of Illinois at Chicago
2025	Nishma P. Vias, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
2024	Joseph M. Montesano, Harvard University
2023	Kayla Lieuw, University of California, San Francisco
2022	Eric Lee, University of California, San Francisco
2021	April G. Martinez, University of California, San Francisco
2020	Lincoln Nguyen, University of California, San Francisco
2019	Hongying Pan, University of Michigan
2018	Hanna Brody, University of California, San Francisco
2017	James L. Zaiger, University of California, Los Angeles
2016	Lynsie Sprouse, Case Western Reserve University