Dr. Jeff Ebersole is professor, dean and director at University of Kentucky’s Center for Oral Health Research.  He speaks at the Dean's Distinguished Lecture series to provide an understanding of the role of nonhuman primates in studies of oral infections and chronic inflammatory disease. Professor Ebersole covers the development of the concepts of oral-systemic disease relationships: aging, adverse pregnancy outcomes, and cardiovascular risk. Also described are the uses of comparative genomics to evaluate ontogenetic host responses to oral infections. From the Series:Dean's Distinguished Lecture Series