Dental materials research is the engine behind every clinical decision a dentist makes — and no one translates that science into practical, clinician-friendly knowledge more effectively than Dr. Nate Lawson. On this episode of The Technology Evangelist Podcast, host Dr. John Flucke sits down with the Director of the Division of Biomaterials at the UAB School of Dentistry for a wide-ranging conversation about how research actually gets done, why marketing claims and lab data don’t always align, where 3D printed zirconia is headed, and what the future of dental prevention might look like. This episode is brought to you by Medidenta Digital Solutions, the proud sponsor making this podcast possible.
Key Insights on Dental Materials Research and the Science Behind Modern Dentistry:
- A Kindergarten Decision That Stuck: Dr. Lawson decided he wanted to be a dentist in kindergarten — unusual even by the standards of a podcast that has featured more than a few guests with early dental callings. Growing up with a pediatric dentist aunt, a periodontist uncle, and a family member married to a general dentist, he was surrounded by the profession from the beginning. But it was a visit to the AAP meeting in New York City during his freshman year of college, where he watched a researcher describe testing sealant retention by tying floss to a brick, that lit the research fire. He walked back to Tulane University, drew up a set of better experimental designs, knocked on the door of legendary dental materials researcher John Burgess at the LSU Dental School, and asked if he could show him his drawings. Burgess let him in. The rest is a career.
- From Hurricane Katrina to UAB Biomaterials: Dr. Lawson spent his college years doing dental materials research in the basement of the LSU dental school, testing composite wear, crown retention, and flexural strength under Burgess’s mentorship. When Hurricane Katrina flooded that basement — along with every Ziploc-bagged specimen he and Burgess had prepared — the lab relocated to UAB in Birmingham. Burgess eventually convinced Dr. Lawson to apply to dental school there. He completed a combined PhD and DMD program in six years, emerged in 2012, briefly entered a GPR residency in Chicago, attempted and missed a pediatric dentistry match, spent several months working for a DSO on Chicago’s South Side wondering what to do next, and then answered another call from Burgess — who offered him a faculty position at UAB. He took a $65,000 pay cut to do it. Eleven months later he met his wife. He has not left Alabama since.
- What Dental Materials Research Actually Looks Like: Dr. Lawson is candid about the realities of running a biomaterials lab. Research ideas are rarely as original as students fear — most are derivations of existing tests applied to new materials or new contexts. The methodology is often the same handful of protocols, recalibrated for each new material category. The real challenge is designing tests that replicate clinical conditions rather than idealized laboratory specimens, a philosophy he inherited directly from Burgess, who spent his career pushing back against the engineering instinct to standardize everything and insisting instead that specimens should be shaped like teeth, polished like teeth, and tested in artificial saliva. That applied research philosophy is the through line connecting Dr. Lawson’s PhD work on composite wear through his CAD/CAM block research and now into 3D printed resin testing.
- The Marketing Claims Problem in Dental Materials Research: If there is one thing that reliably irritates Dr. Lawson, it is unsubstantiated marketing claims about dental materials. He is careful to distinguish between the R&D scientists inside major dental manufacturers — many of whom he describes with genuine respect — and the marketing pressure those scientists sometimes face to support claims the data does not fully justify. He does not take a confrontational public stance when his research contradicts a manufacturer’s claims, but he is unambiguous about his view: deceiving the profession and deceiving patients through overstated material performance claims is a serious problem, and truth is not a negotiable value in dental materials research. He is equally clear-eyed about the growing parallel problem of social media influencers making unsubstantiated clinical or material claims without the research background to support them.
- The Zirconia Wear Story — A Career-Defining Project: One of the most impactful projects Dr. Lawson worked on early in his career involved the question that surrounded Glidewell’s launch of BruxZir: would full-contour zirconia wear opposing enamel into oblivion? Using the same wear machine his lab was already running for composite testing, the team measured enamel wear against zirconia — and found that polished zirconia was actually more enamel-friendly than feldspathic porcelain. That study remains one of the most-cited publications connected to the lab. Dr. Lawson describes it as a perfect example of how dental materials research can follow the same core testing platform across multiple material generations, from direct composites to CAD/CAM blocks to 3D printed resins, with the underlying test logic remaining constant even as the materials evolve.
- 3D Printed Zirconia — The Next Frontier: The most forward-looking topic in the episode is 3D printed zirconia, which Dr. Lawson describes as genuinely exciting but still hampered by two significant technical barriers. Current 3D printing of zirconia involves suspending zirconia particles in a resin binder, printing in that binder, and then performing a debinding process to remove the resin before sintering. The debinding step leaves residual porosity that produces a final restoration that is optically opaque — whiter than porcelain in an unflattering way — and the shrinkage control required for accurate margins remains challenging. The mechanical properties are not bad, but the esthetics and accuracy are not yet clinically competitive. His lab has been characterizing the optical properties of currently available 3D printed zirconia systems and expects to publish. He believes the technology will get there — the researchers working on it at the manufacturer level are among the smartest materials scientists in the field — but the timeline depends on industrial process refinement, not just academic dental materials research.
- The Prevention Gap and Where Materials Science Is Heading: Both Dr. Lawson and Dr. Flucke identify the same area as the most promising frontier in dental materials research: the treatment gap between healthy tooth structure and surgical intervention. Dr. Lawson mentions several active threads in his lab’s work, including new protocols for resin infiltration following icon treatment — specifically, how to bond composite to a tooth surface that has already been infiltrated — and a broader interest in salivary diagnostics and targeted bacterial management. He also notes that the field of remineralization peptides, exemplified by products like Curodont, represents a genuinely novel direction in that it offers a first-ever pharmacological pathway for treating early lesions rather than simply monitoring them. Optical coherence tomography as a subsurface diagnostic tool is another area he views as promising, with the main barrier being hardware cost rather than scientific viability.
- The Clinical Research Realities Nobody Talks About: Dr. Lawson offers a frank look at what makes clinical trials in dentistry so difficult. A properly designed three-year clinical trial on a restorative material costs upwards of $150,000, takes a year to get IRB approval, and produces data that is four to five material generations out of date by the time it publishes. The field of 3D printing is evolving faster than clinical trials can track it. He also notes, with genuine humor, that one of the biggest logistical obstacles to running clinical trials at UAB is the parking situation — patients could not reliably find a space near the dental school, which tanked recruitment. Contextual barriers like these are almost never discussed in published methodology sections, but they are real, and they explain why some of the best-designed clinical dental materials research is increasingly coming out of countries with fewer regulatory and logistical friction points.
Dr. Nate Lawson has built one of the most productive and practically oriented dental materials research programs in the country, and he does it while still seeing patients and teaching dental students who will carry those material science principles into their own careers. For clinicians who want to understand the science behind the materials they use every day — or for dental students looking for a more rigorous foundation than what they got in school — his work is essential reading and listening. Visit www.drnatelawson.com for his speaking schedule and resources, or follow him on Instagram at @dental_tubules.
