From start to finish, Al-Hashimi’s career rooted to the study of saliva 

For a quarter century, Dr. Ibtisam Al-Hashimi has relished her role as the self-described “Spit Doctor” of Texas A&M University College of Dentistry. Not long after joining the faculty, Al-Hashimi formed the dental school’s Salivary Dysfunction Clinic in 1991 — one of the only noncommercial labs in the country dedicated to salivary analysis as a diagnostic tool — and re-energized the Dallas chapter of the Sjögren’s Syndrome Foundation Support Group, dedicated to helping patients with the condition, which causes the body’s white blood cells to attack moisture-producing glands.

On July 8, Al-Hashimi retired from her role as professor in periodontics, bringing to a close a unique professional path that merged training in dentistry, oral surgery, oral sciences and oral biology with an impassioned end goal: improved management of salivary gland and exocrine dysfunction.