The American Dental Education Association (ADEA) has appointed Dr. Marja M. Hurley to its Women’s Affairs Advisory Committee. Hurley is a professor of medicine and orthopaedic surgery and associate dean and director of the Health Career Opportunity Programs at the Health Center.

The appointment is for a three-year term, which begins at the 2012 ADEA Annual Session and Exhibition in March 2012.

As the sole national organization representing academic dentistry, the ADEA is the voice of dental education. ADEA members are more than 19,000 students, faculty, staff, and administrators from all of the U.S. and Canada.

Dr. Jay R. Lieberman, director of the New England Musculoskeletal Institute, has been elected to a leadership role with the American Association of Hip and Knee Surgeons (AAHKS). Lieberman will formally become the third vice president in early 2012 and he will assume the role of president in 2015.AAHKS is a national organization devoted to excellence in hip and knee care through patient advocacy, education and research. Its membership includes prominent surgical specialists and subspecialists with expertise in adult joint reconstruction. Lieberman has previously served as the chair of the AAHKS Education Committee and is credited with overseeing new educational programs for orthopaedic residents and significantly expanding participation in the organization’s national conference.

Carolle T. Andrews, chief administrative officer of the UConn Health Center, and Sanford Cloud Jr., chairman of the Health Center’s Board of Directors, have been named among the 100 Most Influential Blacks in Connecticut by the Connecticut State Conference of NAACP Branches. Andrews and Cloud were recognized during the organization’s 46th annual state convention in Hartford this past weekend.

Dr. Douglas Peterson, professor of oral medicine, School of Dental Medicine and co-chair of head and neck cancer and oral oncology at the Neag Comprehensive Cancer Center, will be chairing the first-in-kind Gordon Research Conference directed to mucosal health and disease in 2013. Peterson has spent over two years helping to develop the model for the conference with the goal of having it every two to three years for the next several decades. The Gordon Research Conference represents cutting edge basic, translational and clinical science at the international level.