NYU Dental Oncology Specialist Named to ADA 10 Under 10 List

GIVEN A CHOICE, Dalal Alhajji, D.D.S., is inclined to pick the more challenging option. It’s what she’s done in her professional career and what she counsels the dental students she mentors to do:

“I tell them, take the difficult cases. Seek out the patients with special needs, whether it’s cancer or another disability. It will be the harder road, but it will make you a better dentist and you will be making a bigger difference in the lives of your patients.”

Earlier this year, Dr. Alhajji was notified by the ADA that she had been chosen to be one of its 2022 10 Under 10 Award Winners. These are the people the ADA considers to be dentistry’s rising stars: dentists who are making an impact on the profession less than 10 years after graduating from dental school.

For Dr. Alhajji, a 2014 graduate of Boston University Henry M. Goldman School of Dental Medicine, being recognized as a young dentist by the ADA is, indeed, an honor, given, she said, how challenging the first few years out of dental school are.

Rather than being daunted by those challenges, however, Dr. Alhajji appears to have embraced them. She is one of the few practicing dentists in the United States who completed a fellowship in dental oncology from Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, in 2019. This was after she had completed an advanced education in general dentistry at Case Western Reserve University School of Dental Medicine while also earning her master of science in dentistry degree in oral medicine.

Today, a faculty member in the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Radiology and Medicine at NYU College of Dentistry, she is the college’s leader of dental oncology and an advocate for how personalized dental care contributes to the overall health of patients with cancer. Additionally, Dr. Alhajji supervises students across three clinics: the Patient Admissions Clinic, Oral Medicine Clinic and Oral Health Center for People with Disabilities. And she offers instruction and mentorship to students over a wide scope of dental procedures on individuals with physical, cognitive and developmental disabilities. Further strengthening her relationship with the students, she is the faculty representative on the Student Affairs Committee. z

Dalal Alhajji