Editorial: CUBO's scientific production hits the pages of the BOR

Editorial: CUBO's scientific production hits the pages of the BOR

Sigmar de Mello Rode

Scientific Editor

In 1975, a group of students, members and directors of the XXV de Janeiro Student Council - the student's association of the School of Dentistry at the University of São Paulo (FOUSP) - decided to innovate and initiated a new event to be held together with the traditional Dental College Week of São Paulo (Semana Odontológica Universitária Paulista). The new event was to be of national breadth and was to bring together the country's dental students. This is how the 1st Brazilian Dental College Congress (Congresso Universitário Brasileiro de Odontologia - CUBO) emerged. However, the FOUSP registrar's office was unable to make the needed classrooms available to hold the event that year during the Semana da Pátria (Nation Week) holiday in the school's main building on Três Rios Street, in downtown São Paulo. Nonetheless, this did not prevent the meeting from being held on the chosen dates, but at the former headquarters of the São Paulo Dental Association (Associação Paulista de Cirurgiões Dentistas - APCD), on Humaitá Street, graciously lent to congress organizers for free. Despite many adversities, the 1^st CUBO was a success, attended by professors from all over the country and students from many different dental schools.

This marked the starting point of a meeting still held every year, and contributing significantly to the development of dentistry, in general, and to the growth of FOUSP's undergraduate and graduate students, in particular. It promises to be a date of long-standing permanence on the Brazilian scientific calendar. Today (2010), CUBO is in its 35^th edition, but maintains its original characteristics and principles, and awards the best projects presented during its sessions. All of the friends of 1975 can feel proud, knowing that the ideals of the 1^st CUBO live on, and have spawned initiatives that have borne many fruits up to now - 35 endeavors to be precise - and who knows how many more in the future.

The 35^th CUBO Organizing Committee, together with the Brazilian Oral Research Journal's Publishing Commission, decided that the best project presented during the congress would be submitted for publication in our journal and that, if accepted by its reviewers, would be published as early as in 2010. The winning paper was the "In vitro effect of low intensity laser on the cytotoxicity produced by substances released by bleaching gel." As promised, it is now being published in the present BOR issue. Furthermore, reflecting the excellence of the event, two additional papers presented at CUBO will be published in the following issue of the BOR, one of which represents research work advised by a professor who was among the group of students that created CUBO in 1975.

Those enterprising youths from 1975 graduated in 1977, and some of them pursued an academic career. Today, many of them are FOUSP professors. One of them, in particular, works at the School of Dentistry of São José dos Campos - UNESP, and has held the position of President of the SBPqO and of the Latin American Region of the IADR, and is also the Scientific Editor of the BOR. Recalling proudly the time when he was the President of the XXV de Janeiro Student Council, 35 years earlier, this Professor is now returning again to CUBO to help the present shape the future, and, in so doing, further commit to the mission of promoting, publicizing and stimulating Brazilian research.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  16 Dec 2010
• Date of issue
  Dec 2010