Announcing the winners of the 2024 Cuspies

After three rounds of input from DrBicuspid readers, we can now proudly announce the winners of the 2024 Cuspies.

We asked readers to decide which people, products, and events impacted the dental industry the most over the course of the past year. After advancing through each round (thanks to your votes), these are the Cuspies winners:

• Dental Educator of the Year:  Tom Viola, RPh
  
  
• Hygiene Educator of the Year: Jennifer Turner, RDH
  
  
• Best Dentistry Training Program: The University of Florida
  
  
• Best Hygiene Training Program: The University of Texas School of Dentistry at Houston
  
  
• Dentist Influencer of the Year: Dr. Avi Patel (@doctor.avi)
  
  
• Hygienist Influencer of the Year: Jerry Vahan Ounjian, RDH (@jerry_rdh)
  
  
• Best New Imaging Product: Diagnocat AI
  
  
• Best New Hygiene Product: Waterpik Sensonic Electric Toothbrush
  
  
• Best New Restorative Product: Ultradent Transcend universal composite
  
  
• Best New Consumer Product: Waterpik Sensonic Electric Toothbrush
  
  
• Most Significant News Story: Stop shielding patients during dental imaging
  
  
• Scientific Paper of the Year:  “Effect of silver diamine fluoride on caries arrest and prevention: The CariedAway school-based randomized clinical trial," JAMA Network Open

All of the Cuspies winners will receive their award during the month of February. I plan to present some of the trophies in person to the winners at this year's Chicago Midwinter Meeting, which runs February 22-24 at McCormick Place. DrBicuspid.com will be in the Windy City for the event, bringing readers the latest information through articles on our site and through the DrBicuspid.com podcast series that can be found on all of the major podcast channels.

Congratulations to all of the winners and a big thank-you to each of you who took the time to submit nominations in our 12 categories and who voted throughout the process. Some of the categories were very close on the final vote, so this year was truly a case of every vote counting.