Dr. Azeez Butali is a Professor of Craniofacial Genetics and the Gilbert Lily endowed Professor of Diagnostic Sciences at the College of Dentistry, University of Iowa. He holds secondary appointments as Professor in the Department of Pediatrics at the Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa, and the Iowa Institute for Human Genetics. As PI and Co-I on NIH and Private Foundation grant and has received multi-million dollars grant funding to support his research. He led AfriCRAN to publish the first genetic study for non-syndromic clefts in Africa, conduct the first Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) for clefting in the African population and to conduct the first and second whole genome sequencing (WGS) for orofacial clefts in African population His lab discovered CTNNA2 and SULT2A as cleft palate candidate genes and AFDN as clefting gene through GWAS and WGS. He has published over 110 articles indexed in PubMed with an H-index of 29 in Google scholar (as of today) and presented over 220 abstracts at National and International meetings. Dr Butali is currently leading efforts to translate discovery to health and the prevention of oral, dental and craniofacial diseases.