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Özlem Yilmaz, DDS, PhD, received her DDS from Istanbul University in Turkey, and her PhD in Oral Biology from the University of Washington, Seattle, where she pursued her post-doctoral work on oral microbes in the Department of Global Health and was the first dentist scientist accepted as a visiting fellow at the Institut Pasteur, Paris. She had a decade at the University of Florida as a tenured and clinical attending faculty and became a research foundation professor and fellow of the UF Academy of Research Excellence prior to MUSC. She joined the James B. Edwards College of Dental Medicine in January 2016 as a tenured professor and was appointed as chair of the Oral Health Sciences in February 2021.

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Yilmaz has been a leading scientist and a pioneer in periodontal pathobionts and their role in systemic diseases, such as dementia, with continual National Institute of Health (NIH) grants since 2001 as principal investigator. Her novel studies on periodontal microbes were featured multiple times by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR). She has been placed in the world’s top 2% most cited dentistry and microbiology scientists in a single calendar year since 2017, as published by Stanford University, 2021 in PloS Biology.

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Additionally, Yilmaz has been a champion for underrepresented minorities, women, and individuals with diverse backgrounds at MUSC who have become the next generation of educators, faculty, and scientists in the Oral Health Sciences. Many of these individuals have received fellowship grants from NIDCR, AADOCR/IADR, Karolinska Institutet, and more under her mentorship. Since she joined MUSC, she has been the catalyst of numerous high achievements being awarded to the James B. Edwards College of Dental Medicine at the national and international levels, both through her name and her mentees' and trainees’ names.