Improved metallurgy lab reopens in School of Dentistry

By Matt Westerfield

With the July 30 reopening of the School of Dentistry's metallurgy lab at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, researchers in biomedical materials science "now have a materials lab that's back to state-of-the-art," said Dr. Lyle "Zach" Zardiackas, professor emeritus and former chair of the department.

A fire destroyed much of the fifth-floor lab in October 2007, and with contracts on the line, faculty members pulled together and managed the workload by using space throughout the building, including vacant faculty offices, corners of clinics and other researchers' labs.

"It was a disastrous mess," Zardiackas recalled following a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new lab, which is housed in the original location. Zardiackas, who officially retired last year, helped build the Biomedical Materials Science department during his nearly 30 years at the Medical Center. "It was a crisis situation. We had too much research money coming in, and too many obligations and we couldn't afford to just sit around."

But, he said, everyone pitched in and made it work.

The state Legislature passed a special appropriation to replace the lab but the funds weren't available until the following July. Zardiackas credits Margie Solomon and Mike Lightsey, both of financial affairs, with meeting the challenge and raising funds to replace the most essential equipment quickly. As a result, the department was able to keep up with its workload.

"We weren't able to write new proposals that required substantial work," Zardiackas said, but they met their obligations.

Now that the new and improved lab is open and the department is back up to speed, Zardiackas expects no shortage of contract work.

"Bringing in money is not the problem," he said. "The problem is having enough people and facilities to do the work. We've got people climbing the walls wanting to work with us."

Dr. Jason Griggs, chair of Biomedical Materials Science, said the lab features new and unique equipment that adds to the department's variety of analytical capabilities and helps set the department apart from others around the world. If a client wants five different analytical tests run on a particular sample, Griggs explained, they could all be done under the same roof at UMMC as opposed to being sent to separate universities with more limited resources. Furthermore, the department boasts a higher-than-average fatigue-testing capacity.

"It's rare to have (a lab) this large with this many faculty members," Griggs said, adding that the lab includes six graduate students. "This research group has a history of setting the standards for testing biomedical materials."