Message from UW Orthodontic Department Chair Greg Huang

Dear Alums,

Best wishes as we welcome warmer weather here in Seattle. Our graduation event and the Alton Moore Lecture was held on March 21 in Kane Hall. It was great to have the event on campus, with a sweeping view of Red Square. Several notable alums were in attendance, including Lena Omnell, Bryan Williams, David Turpin, and Bill McNeill. Barbara Sheller was our Alton Moore Lecturer, and the seniors really appreciated her personal touch and inspirational words. As always, it was a wonderful day to celebrate the accomplishments of our senior class, made even more special by the attendance of many family members and friends.

Next year, Bill McNeill will be our Alton Moore Lecturer. As you know, Bill has had an extremely fulfilling career as an orthodontist, as well as lots of adventures outside of orthodontics. I hope you will all mark Thesis Day and the Alton Moore Lecture (March 20, 2026) in your calendars now, as it is an event you will not want to miss!

In June, we look forward to welcoming our next class. One special note – it is the first time we will be training a third generation of orthodontists. Tommy Nelson is the son of Paul Nelson (Class of 1995) and grandson of James Nelson (Class of 1966). Congrats to the Nelson family!

For local alums and any alums who might be visiting Seattle this summer, we are planning an alumni cruise on Sunday, July 20. More info about this event will be coming soon from the UWOAA. On that note, I would like to thank all the officers of the UWOAA for their dedication to the department, and their efforts in maintaining strong ties to the alums. As President, Sam Finkleman has really led by example, and we should thank him for a job well done.

My best to each of you,

Greg J. Huang, DMD, MSD, MPH
Professor and Chair

Message from UWOAA Board President
Samuel Finkleman

Dear Alumni,

I hope that this message finds you well. First and foremost, congrats to our recent graduates! This year, Thesis Day was hosted at the Walker-Ames Room in Kane Hall. Following student research presentations, Barbara Sheller (’87) gave a presentation entitled “Orthodontic Odyssey: Inspiration and Celebration”. We look forward to welcoming you back to the Walker-Ames Room for Thesis Day next year. Bill McNeill will be the Alton Moore Lecturer.

The continued success of our program is made possible by the engagement and generosity of our alumni. Traditionally, alumni association dues have been used to support the day-to-day operations of the association, whereas donations have been used to support the department. Each contribution, whether large or small, plays a vital role in enriching the educational experience of our program. To highlight this, I have outlined the annual support that we provide to the department. Please reach out to the board if you have any questions.

Direct Support to the Department/Residents

· Resident research: $7500 per resident (recently increased from $5000 per resident)

· Travel stipend for conferences: $500 towards GORP (1st year residents), $500 towards Tweed (2nd year residents), $500 towards PCSO and AAO (3rd year residents)

· ABO written exam: $1200 per resident, upon successful completion of the exam

Events

· Annual summer picnic: cost varies depending on venue, registration, etc.

· Alumni receptions at PCSO and AAO meetings: $2000-4000 per reception

· Reunions: cost varies depending on venue, registration cost, etc.

Operating expenses of the alumni association, primarily accounting, website management, and administrative fees: $5000 per year.

As we move towards summer, please mark your calendars for the annual department/alumni “picnic” on July 20th. This year, the alumni association will host the event on Lake Union. Please see the save-the-date in this newsletter and keep an eye out for additional information about registration.

Finally, if you have not already done so, we kindly ask you to renew your alumni membership by paying your annual alumni dues. This can be done on our website. Your continued support strengthens our community and helps ensure that future generations of residents benefit from the same exceptional training and opportunities that shaped our own careers. Together, we can build on a proud legacy and support the next wave of orthodontists.

Best,

Samuel Finkleman (’19)
UWOAA President

UPCOMING EVENTS

Dear Alums,

We are taking our Summer picnic to the water this year! Please join us aboard a Waterways cruise, leaving from South Lake Union on Sunday, July 20th. Stay tuned for more details, but please mark your calendars and SAVE THE DATE! We can’t wait to see you there!

Best,
UWOAA Board

Save the Date:

Friday, March 20th, 2026

hosted at the Walker-Ames room in Kane Hall

Dr. Bil McNeill

Registration costs are complimentary for all UW Ortho alumni who have paid their annual dues!

UW thesis Day 2025

Meet Our Class of 2025 Graduates!

residents uwoaa 2025 — Left to right
Top Row: Dayton Oki, Niloufar Amintavakoli, Daniel Lander
Bottom Row: Sophie Cohanim, Mariam Mustafa

Dr. Niloufar Amintavakoli

Hometown: Tehran, Iran

Education: DDS, Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran, 2009
MSc, Specialty in Oral and Maxillofacial Radiology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, 2013

Hobbies outside of Orthodontics: cooking and modifying Persian recipes to invent fusion food. Nilu enjoys traveling, exploring different cuisines, watching Broadway shows and dancing.

Graduate Student research: Orthodontists’ Awareness of the Radiation Dose of Cone Beam CT Scans (CBCT) in Orthodontics and its Influence on the Use of CBCT

Dr. Sophia Cohanim

Hometown: Seattle, WA

Education: BS in Biology, University of Washington, 2017
DDS, University of Washington School of Dentistry, 2022

Hobbies outside of Orthodontics: Sophia enjoys spending as much time as possible outside, preferably in the mountains! Her favorite hobbies are skiing, running, hiking, and biking.

Graduate Student Research: Alveolar Bone Height Preservation in Growing Patients After Decoronation of Submerged Primary Teeth: A Retrospective Cohort Study

Dr. Daniel Lander

Hometown: Tulsa, OK

Education: BA in Biology, Honors College at the College of Charleston, 2016
DDS, University of Oklahoma College of Dentistry, 2020
MSD, Specialty in Pediatric Dentistry, Virginia Commonwealth University, 2022

Hobbies outside of Orthodontics: Daniel enjoys anything on the water and outside in general. He loves different breweries and trying all types of beer. Daniel is also a car enthusiast and could spend all day researching and building cars!

Graduate Student Research: Facial Symmetry Outcomes in Patients with Craniofacial Microsomia after Growth Monitoring, Corrective Surgery, and Orthodontic Treatment

Dr. Mariam Mustafa

Hometown: London, England

Education: DDS, University of Washington School of Dentistry, 2022

Hobbies outside of Orthodontics: Mariam enjoys early morning coffees in small independent cafes, she is looking forward to traveling again, and really enjoys meeting and cooking with family and friends.

Graduate Student Research: Obstructive Sleep Apnea: A Summary of Clinical Practice Guidelines and the Adherence by Airway Focused Dentists and Orthodontists

Dr. Dayton Oki

Hometown: Honolulu, HI

Education: BS in Biology, Creighton University, 2018
DDS, University of Washington School of Dentistry, 2022

Hobbies outside of Orthodontics: Dayton enjoys activities outside, such as hiking, spearfishing, surfing, and tennis. He also likes cooking Japanese food, creating digital art and making ceramic pottery. Graduate Student Research: Comparison of Outcomes in Adolescents Treated with Aligners or Fixed Appliances in an Academic Setting

Interview with Bill McNeill, UW Orthodontics ’64
by Peter Shapior

In this profile I focus on Bill McNeill’s activities since his retirement from the University of Washington faculty and from orthodontic practice. For the sake of some younger alumni who may not be familiar with him, I’ll start by mentioning a little about his background. Bill grew up in New Jersey, attended the University of Delaware, the University of Pennsylvania for dental school (one of three brothers who are dentists) and a MS in Physical Anthropology, and then UW for his orthodontic residency. After several years in the United States Army in Germany Bill returned to Seattle, assumed a half-time orthodontic faculty position and established practices in Laurelhurst and Kirkland. Bill was active in organized orthodontics, leading up to his Presidency of the PCSO. He was a prolific author and lecturer, and in collaboration with oral surgeons Jim Hooley and Roger West inaugurated the interdisciplinary orthognathic surgery program in the late 1960s. Bill had the great distinction of being promoted to the rank of Professor on a less than full-time academic appointment. He was my teacher at UW, and Bill and I practiced together for about 17 years, until his first retirement. I guess that was a spoiler alert.

Peter – Bill, in 1999 you published a paper in the AJODO entitled: “Retirement from orthodontics: Financial and psychosocial preparation and adaption.” What did you learn from your research?

Bill – This report, based on a survey of 231 retired PCSO orthodontists, demonstrated that from the perspective of both financial security and psychosocial well-being the general experience was of a successful transition out of professional life. It confirmed that retirement can be enhanced by financial planning that protects against the exigencies of disability and assures adequate wealth accumulation, by emotional preparation that anticipates the change in public and professional status, and by involvement in diverse activities that provide for ongoing mental and physical vitality. It was evident that the more broad-based the pre-retirement life experience, the greater the degree of post-retirement satisfaction. Those retirees who had an avocation, or a non-orthodontic business interest, found great ease in the transition to retirement. Particularly meaningful to me was the finding that those who chose to pursue voluntary involvement contributing to the betterment of society felt the greatest sense of satisfaction.

Peter – You first retired from practice in the early 1990s when you were in your mid-fifties. What motivated you to retire then and how well were you prepared?

Bill – As I look back, I recognize that while I felt passionate about and gratified by my academic and practice careers, I had no emotional need to continue doing the same things on into the future. My son and daughter had completed graduate school, so my family obligations were minimal. I felt reasonably financially secure, although financial analysis and projections proved to be largely an exercise in futility since there were so many uncontrollable variables. If I had deferred until I could calculate with certainty there was no financial risk, I would probably not have retired at that time. So in the end I decided to “just do it”!

Peter – I know part of your motivation to retire early was to sail the world. What was the origin of that dream?

Bill – As a boy, I read everything I could find about the age of exploration and about those daring mariners who sailed the oceans. My immigrant family did not have the means to have so much as a canoe, but I watched from the beaches as the “other people” sailed their yachts along the east coast…and let my fantasies roam. It wasn’t until I came to Seattle for my residency that I started sailing. When my children were in their teens, we spent our summers exploring the inland waters of Washington and British Columbia on our small sailboat. Always in the back of my mind was the dream to one day do some offshore cruising. So yes, an element of my choosing early retirement was to enable heading off, literally and figuratively, into the sunset.

After a couple of years of feverish preparation, including selling my practices and my home and equipping Grasshopper, a Fast Passage 39’ cutter-rigged sloop, I did just that. Two years were spent sailing down the west coast of the US and Mexico, three years crossing the Pacific to New Zealand via the Marquesas, the Tuomotos, Tahiti, Bora Bora, the Cook Islands, Samoa, and all three island groups of the Kingdom of Tonga. Then I spent two years coastal cruising in New Zealand, exploring the land by camper van, and even doing presentations to the New Zealand Society of Orthodontists.

Peter – Very cool. How much of your sailing did you do solo vs with companions? Did you prefer one way or the other or were they just different?

Bill – Of the more than twelve-thousand nautical miles I sailed over those seven years, approximately seventy-five percent was single-handed. I rigged Grasshopper specifically to be able to manage that physically and with safety. I preferred solo sailing since irrespective of conditions, I had to be concerned only about my own welfare. I passed days, even weeks at a time, reveling in the solitude and absorbing the beauty of the natural world. There were, of course, challenges, but the joy of being alone, and not lonely, more than balanced the rare adversity. Connection with local people, particularly in the Pacific Island Nations where I made landfall, came easily. I had daily conversations by single-sideband radio net with other cruisers on the same journey and made lasting friendships among them as we shared remote anchorages. So I never felt out of touch and was fully occupied. Days, and nights, were consumed with navigation tasks, weather tracking, sail handling, boat maintenance and repair as well as the quotidian tasks of meal preparation and general housekeeping.

Peter – You obviously had incredible experiences, but did you fulfill your boyhood dream?

Bill – I certainly did. Those years proved to be some of the richest of my life…filled as they were adventure, exposure to new and novel things, mastering of multiple maritime skill sets, and most of all getting to know myself in ways that otherwise might have gone undiscovered.

Peter – You then settled in Mammoth Lakes, California and became very involved in environmental issues. How did that happen?

Bill – Many of the Pacific Island Nations, including French Polynesia, disallow non-residents to keep a boat in the water during the Southern Hemisphere cyclone season. So each summer, with Grasshopper out of the water, I decamped to the Eastern Sierra for a Northern Hemisphere winter of skiing. Mammoth, nestled among the John Muir and Ansel Adams Wilderness areas, Inyo National Forest and Yosemite National Park, I came to know intimately as one of the last great places. At the time the town was threatened by the development of a vast open pit gold mine and industrial processing facility which would have destroyed the natural environment and recreation-based economy. After speaking publicly in opposition to that development I was prevailed upon by the Mono County supervisors to organize a citizens’ task force to oppose the mine. Thus I, with a cadre of fellow activists, embarked on a years-long public information and political campaign which ultimately, through some creative legal legerdemain, forced the mining company to fold.

With that experience I was asked to join the Board of Directors of the Mineral Policy Center (now renamed Earthworks), an environmental advocacy non-profit based in Washington, DC. Over a twenty-year period, five of which I served as Chairman of the Board, I worked on legislative and regulatory reform to control the worst practices of the hard-rock mining and oil and gas extraction industries.

Peter – Since you never did anything remotely half-heartedly, I’m curious as to how much time you spent on these things?

Bill – I often claim that this was akin to a second career, complete with everything except a paycheck. But the rewards far outweighed any effort I put into it. As with my academic career, I relished the opportunity to work collaboratively with young, enthusiastic, deeply committed, knowledgeable colleagues… in this case toward innovative solutions for environmental sustainability.

Peter – In 2000 you moved back to Seattle and began practicing orthodontics again as a locum tenens. I understand why you moved back to Seattle, but why unretire?

Bill – Well, it was not part of the grand plan, but it began with maternity leave coverage for our graduates Camille Vandeventer (UW ’91) in Federal Way and Anna Law (UW ’95) in Kingston, Jamaica and just grew from there. After a hiatus of ten years, I quickly got up to speed with the many advances in technology and learned to adroitly adapt to different practice management systems and styles as well as a variety of diagnostic and patient management protocols. Over a five year period I worked in almost twenty practices, some for a few days and others for more extended periods. I associated for several years with Heather Woloshyn (UW ’93) when David Turpin (UW ’66) retired from practice and had a five year associateship with John Ive (UW ’79) in Bothell. The culmination was when I took over Carol Knaup’s (UW ’93) Mercer Island practice where I spent the last decade of my practice career.

Peter – So after retiring again, you pursued another of your passions, cycling. As with sailing, you biked in various parts of the world, sometimes with companions and a lot of it alone. Tell us a little about those experiences.

Bill – I have kept a bicycle in Europe for the past twelve years, leaving it at bike shops or with friends, such as Jean Pierre Joho (UW ’71) in Geneva, between trips. For a month or two each year I retrieve my bike and set out on the extensive system of Eurovelo cycling routes with no advance plan. I just ride each day and stop when and where I find something of particular interest or decide to share time with persons I meet along the way. In this fashion I cover about a thousand miles on each trip. I have traced all the major river courses (Main, Rhine, Rhone, Danube, Loire, Vltava), climbed many of the Swiss, French, German, and Austrian mountain passes, biked several of the routes of the Tour de France, and left tire tracks in seventeen countries. In addition, my long-time partner, Lillo Way, and I rent homes for a month or two each year, primarily in France but also in Italy and in the UK. During these sojourns I do a lot of local cycling, often discovering out-of-the-way places that I can then share with Lillo. And more recently I have teamed up with three, much younger than I, Seattle cyclist mates to do weeks long rides in Idaho/Montana, Oregon, France, Scotland and this year Tuscany. Winters find me escaping to the Southern Hemisphere to bike in Chile, Argentina, Australia, and on multiple occasions, New Zealand. I am blessed with good health and all this cycling has kept me in reasonably fine shape.

Peter – Congratulations on having such a productive and active retirement! Can you share with us any final thoughts about retirement and the way in which you have experienced it?

Bill – As I now approach my ninetieth birthday, I can say unequivocally that I am deeply thankful for my good fortune in leading the life that I have both during my working years and in retirement. As the wise saying goes, “The secret to happiness is having something to do, someone to love, and something to look forward to.” These have come to me in abundance as I have worked and played with equal passion. If I can be so presumptive as to offer a few bits of advice they would be: Follow your heart, don’t allow your life choices to be governed by the expectations of anyone but yourself, embrace change, and… just do it! In this profile I focus on Bill McNeill’s activities since his retirement from the University of Washington faculty and from orthodontic practice. For the sake of some younger alumni who may not be familiar with him, I’ll start by mentioning a little about his background. Bill grew up in New Jersey, attended the University of Delaware, the University of Pennsylvania for dental school (one of three brothers who are dentists) and a MS in Physical Anthropology, and then UW for his orthodontic residency. After several years in the United States Army in Germany Bill returned to Seattle, assumed a half-time orthodontic faculty position and established practices in Laurelhurst and Kirkland. Bill was active in organized orthodontics, leading up to his Presidency of the PCSO. He was a prolific author and lecturer, and in collaboration with oral surgeons Jim Hooley and Roger West inaugurated the interdisciplinary orthognathic surgery program in the late 1960s. Bill had the great distinction of being promoted to the rank of Professor on a less than full-time academic appointment. He was my teacher at UW, and Bill and I practiced together for about 17 years, until his first retirement. I guess that was a spoiler alert.