Professor, Diagnostic and Biomedical Sciences

Associate Dean for Research

Director, Clinical and Translational Research, UTHealth School of Dentistry

Cindy is a native of Galveston, Texas. She is an active researcher and has a federally and foundationally funded laboratory focused on tissue engineering, extracellular matrix and cancer biology. She is a pioneer in the use of complex 3D systems for cell and microtissue culture of both normal and cancerous tissues. She is the author of over 200 publications and frequently serves as a reviewer for both grant applications and journal articles. After eleven years as a faculty member at the University of Texas Health Science Center (UTHSC) Dental Branch, she left Houston in 1998 to join the faculty at the University of Delaware where she was a professor of Biological and Materials Sciences from 1998-2009. She was the founding director of the Center for Translational Cancer Research, a role she began in 2005 that brought together four institutions and hospitals with a focus on accelerating translation of cancer research findings to the clinic. She came to Rice University in 2009 to provide scientific leadership and vision for the BioScience Research Collaborative and to foster a climate of interdisciplinary and translational research and innovation. She joined the Texas Medical Center as a strategic advisor in 2014. In fall of 2016, Cindy returned as a Professor of Diagnostic and Biomedical Sciences to the UTHSC, now UTHealth, in the School of Dentistry. In 2022, she assumed the position as Associate Dean for Research. She is passionate about bringing research from bench discovery through the marketplace and finally to the clinic. She hopes to one day bring the salivary gland her team is building to the clinic for patients who suffer from xerostomia due to hyposalivation (dry mouth) after having radiation for head/neck cancer.