Meet Timothy Bromage, Ph.D. of New York University School of Dentistry Hard Tissue Research Unit. Together with researchers from the Facial Beauty Institute, Dr. Bromage is carrying out some very significant research of critical importance to dentists. The findings of this work will have great impact for better patient care and treatment.
Research Interests / Professional Overview
Professor Bromage directs the Hard Tissue Research Unit (HTRU), a mineralized tissue preparation and imaging technology development laboratory of the Department of Biomaterials and Biomimetics, NYUCD. Mineralized tissue biology with emphasis on its translation to environmental and evolutionary studies are key to many of Bromage's HTRU pursuits, which include microanatomical correlates of bone and tooth biomechanics, enamel and bone growth rate variability in respect to environmental perturbations, and skeletal disease research. Recently, he has reported on a formerly unrecognized chronobiological rhythm in bone microstructure that corresponds to a previously observed but enigmatic enamel formation rhythm in mammals, establishing the basis for understanding how chronobiology and organismal life history evolution are integrated.
Professor Bromage supplements laboratory research with African Late Pliocene paleontological fieldwork of significance to human evolutionary research, the surveys of which have recovered the oldest known representative of the human genus, Homo rudolfensis, 2.4 Ma, as well as its contemporary, Paranthropus boisei, from the shores of Lake Malawi. Fieldwork on Late Pleistocene pygmy elephant and pygmy hippopotamus localities in the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus are also ongoing, which provides a natural experiment of relevance to interpretations of modern human dental reduction.
The integration of graphic and heuristic elements in the digital photomicrography of bone and tooth microanatomy is important to Professor Bromage, who presents the work as abstract art; his exhibit is currently touring Europe. Images include a variety of subjects of relevance to his equally integrative research agenda, from images of gene knockout mice in novel cancer research, to human evolutionary studies including microanatomical images from the bones of "Lucy" (a representative of the earliest humans from Ethiopia, ca. 3.0 Ma).
Professor Bromage is the recipient of the 2010 Max Planck Prize in the Life Sciences (paleobiomics; emphasis in Human Evolution), is Honorary Professor of La Salle University, Madrid, Spain, and is Honorary Research Fellow of the Department of Paleoanthropology, Senckenberg Research Institute, Frankfurt, Germany. Dr. Bromage has published over 50 peer-reviewed clinical and scientific articles worldwide.