A Legacy of Leadership: Dr. Bulard Takes the Helm at Park Dental Research

Some company transitions are just transactions. 

This one was different. 

In 2011, Ronald A. Bulard, DDS, acquired Park Dental Research from founder Jack Wimmer and was appointed CEO and President. On paper, that is a change in ownership. In the history of implant dentistry, it was something more meaningful: a handoff between two generations of dental innovators. 

Wimmer represented the founding era. His Park Dental Studios helped shape the early implant revolution, bringing together the clinicians, researchers, and craftsmen who were building a new field before it had fully defined itself. 

Bulard represented the next era: clinician, inventor, entrepreneur, IMTEC® founder, and one of the key figures who helped bring mini dental implants into broader clinical and commercial use. 

The 2011 milestone matters because it did not erase the company’s past. It connected that past to the next stage of growth. 

A transition, not a restart 

It is worth being precise about what changed in 2011. 

Park Dental Research did not begin that year. The company’s roots go back to Jack Wimmer’s earlier laboratory and the formal establishment of Park Dental Research Corporation in 1967. By the time Bulard acquired the company, Park Dental Research already carried decades of implant history, including an FDA-cleared implant portfolio that reached back to the STARTANIUS Dental Implant System. 

What changed in 2011 was leadership, direction, and operating momentum. 

The company began a new chapter under Bulard’s leadership in Ardmore, Oklahoma, while still maintaining continuity with its New York history. Wimmer remained part of the story, not as a name being replaced, but as the founder whose legacy would continue through a new management team and a renewed product strategy. 

That distinction matters. This was not a new company borrowing an old name. It was an established implant company entering a new phase under a leader who understood the field from both the clinical and manufacturing sides. 

Why Bulard was the right successor 

Bulard was not an outsider stepping into implant dentistry. He had already built one of the most recognizable implant companies in the field. 

He founded IMTEC® Corporation in 1990 and helped turn it into a major dental implant company before its acquisition by 3M in 2008. IMTEC® became known for mini dental implants, and Bulard’s work with Dr. Victor Sendax helped refine the MDI concept through the O-ball design that made denture stabilization simpler, more practical, and more accessible for many patients. 

That background made the Park Dental transition unusually fitting. 

Wimmer’s legacy was rooted in the earliest problem-solving culture of implant dentistry: fabrication precision, prosthetic engineering, and collaboration with the field’s pioneers. Bulard’s experience was rooted in taking implant ideas and turning them into scalable, teachable, commercially available systems. 

One built the workshop where the field took shape. 

The other knew how to take a clinical idea and build the company around it. 

That is why the 2011 succession belongs on the Park Dental Research timeline. It was not only a leadership change. It was the moment the company’s founding heritage was paired with an operating model for the next generation. 

The return of the mini dental implant lineage 

The 2011 transition also brought one of Park Dental Research’s most important storylines full circle. 

The mini dental implant concept had deep roots in the Park Dental network through Dr. Victor Sendax and the early implant pioneers who worked around Wimmer’s laboratory. Later, the concept became commercially significant through Bulard’s IMTEC® work and the refined IMTEC® Sendax MDI system. 

When Bulard acquired Park Dental Research, those two parts of the story reconnected. 

The new Park Dental Research placed early focus on the LEW™ MDI line, a mini dental implant system tied to the same minimally invasive, access-focused philosophy that had made the MDI concept important in the first place. This was not a random product direction. It was a continuation of a clinical idea that had been moving through the company’s orbit for decades. 

That is the deeper meaning of the 2011 milestone. Park Dental Research was not simply continuing as an implant company. It was reclaiming and advancing one of the most important implant ideas connected to its own history. 

What the transition unlocked 

The years after 2011 show why the leadership change mattered. 

Under the renewed Park Dental Research structure, the company expanded across implants, materials, aligners, software, and additive manufacturing. The regulatory record reflects that broader trajectory: JUELL® products, LEW™ mini implants, Park Dental Research Aligners, Orchestrate 3D™, JUELL™ 3D materials, and eventually DigiLine® all fit into the company’s larger evolution from traditional implant manufacturing into digital dentistry and advanced manufacturing. 

That did not happen all at once. 

The 2011 transition created the bridge. It brought together Wimmer’s implant heritage, Bulard’s IMTEC® experience, an Oklahoma-based operating base, and a product strategy that could move from implant systems into a wider digital platform. 

In hindsight, the pattern is clear. 

2011 set the company back in motion. 

2014 brought CT scanning and 3D printing into the company’s offering. 

2019 marked the next stage of aligner and treatment-planning development. 

2022 and 2024 advanced the direct-print aligner system story through DigiLine®. 

The digital future did not replace the implant legacy. It grew out of it. 

The throughline 

Park Dental Research has always been shaped by people who understood that dentistry is both technical and deeply human. 

Wimmer’s generation helped create implant dentistry by solving the problems directly in front of them: how to restore function, how to fabricate what did not yet exist, and how to give patients back what they had lost. 

Bulard’s generation carried that same instinct into a different era: how to make implant care more accessible, how to simplify treatment, how to build systems clinicians could adopt, and how to move from individual innovation to scalable manufacturing. 

That is why the 2011 milestone is more than a leadership note on a timeline. 

It is the bridge between Park Dental Research’s founding legacy and its modern future. 

A company built by one generation of implant pioneers was handed to another leader who understood the responsibility of carrying it forward. The name stayed. The purpose stayed. The work continued. 

Park Dental Research continues to build on its implant heritage through LEW™ MDI, STARTANIUS™, STAR/VENT™, JUELL™ 3D, Orchestrate 3D™, and DigiLine®. 
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