Dent-AL 2025

Advancing oral health and dentistry for a changing world

Melbourne Dental School

Dent-AL is the magazine for alumni of the Melbourne Dental School.

Contributors: Many thanks to Stephanie Anderson, Georgia Coon, Marcus Doherty, Florienne Loder, Sarah Marinos, Taylah Mclean, Jane Metlikovec, Rhys Morgan, Bianca Nogrady, Marli Prado, Tim Sharp, Frank van Rensburg and AV Graphic Design.

Note: For space and readability, only degrees conferred by the University of Melbourne are listed beside the names of alumni in this publication.

Cover image: Associate Professor Roy Judge holds a 3D-printed model of the Rectangular Block Implant (RBI), the first of its kind to be designed and prototyped in Australia at the newly opened Aikenhead Centre for Medical Discovery (ACMD).

The horizontal dental implant aims to more readily fit to the available jawbone in elderly patients to reduce the grafting that is typically required for vertical implants.

The implant is being developed by Associate Professor Judge and his team of researchers, clinicians and scientists across multiple disciplines including Dr Tim Gazelakis and Associate Professor Joseph Palamara.

The ACMD brings together MedTech research, commercialisation and clinical education. Read more about Roy’s story on page 26.

Photography: Peter Casamento We acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of the unceded land on which we work, learn and live. We pay respect to Elders past, present and future, and acknowledge the importance of Indigenous knowledge in the Academy.

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Contents

Welcome from the Head of School

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Why dentists should be at the apex of health prevention and community care

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Global lessons for a fairer, smarter Australian dental system

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Could gum disease cause dementia?

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The next dental revolution: regrowing teeth

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#WeMet@UniMelb: A software engineer, physicist and chemistry student design the tooth filling of the future

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Dr Kaunein’s passion for oral health equity

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How one award-winning PhD researcher is making cancer detection faster with AI

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Why cultural safety is core to dental care

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Building a culture of collaboration in oral healthcare for the best possible care

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The pains and gains of dental history at the Melbourne Dental Museum

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Game-changing dental implants to be advanced at new university MedTech centre

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Dr Vui Tan receives Ephraim Ehrmann Prize:

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School and alumni awards

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Welcome from the Head of School This edition of Dent-AL explores the innovative ways our students, staff and alumni are making a difference to the health and wellbeing of our communities by collectively meeting the challenges of a changing world as part of the Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences’ Advancing Health 2030 strategy.

With a new Vice Chancellor Professor Emma Johnston AO, who commenced her role at the University of Melbourne in February 2025, I am excited that the Melbourne Dental School can contribute in important ways to the transformational change we need to see to prepare our students for the future.

Students are at the heart of everything we do and I invite you to learn about how we are embedding teamwork and compassion from the first year of their dental and oral health training.

New AI technology that supports faster oral cancer diagnosis and stem-cell research could also one day see adults regrowing missing teeth - these are just some of the amazing research stories featured in this edition.

This year, my colleagues and I have also written some thought pieces about areas of community and societal need – and how best we tackle them through innovative teaching, research, commercialisation and improvements in clinical care.

They highlight the transformative, inclusive and collaborative work that defines our oral health and dental community.

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Associate Professor Rita Hardiman, Interim Head of School, Melbourne Dental School

Professor Petros Papagerakis, the new Head of the Melbourne Dental School

As you read these and our thought-leadership pieces, I hope they spark pride in what we are building together, and excitement for the future of oral and dental health.

I’d also like to thank everyone for the privilege of being the interim Head of the Melbourne Dental School and to warmly welcome the new Head of School, Professor Petros Papagerakis, who arrived in September from his previous role as Dean of the Faculty of Dental Medicine, Laval University, Quebec.

As well as being a respected leader, Professor Papagerakis is internationally recognised for his research on rare dental genetic diseases, dental tissue regeneration, circadian medicine and precision oral health.

Welcome to your next chapter, Professor Papagerakis!

Associate Professor Rita Hardiman Interim Head of the Melbourne Dental School Dent-AL 2025 5

Why dentists should be at the apex of health prevention and community care

By Associate Professor Rita Hardiman Interim Head of Melbourne Dental School

Archaeologists surveying Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel Project works on Swanston Street discovered the remains of 1880s dental clinics – specifically, 2,500 extracted teeth! These remnants of an era of oral health neglect are broken, stained, worn and contain massive cavities. The owners of these teeth clearly delayed going to the dentist until pain and discomfort became unbearable.

These discoveries showcase how far dentistry has come in technical expertise and prevention, and in the patient-clinician relationship. Gone are the days of patients simply receiving a treatment dictated to them by their dentist.

Dentists are uniquely positioned to be a powerful force in health promotion as they offer three vital advantages: acute observation, continuity of care – and trust.

But my 15 years within the Melbourne Dental School, including 12 months as Interim Head of School, have confirmed for me that dentists have a pivotal role to play in improving broader health outcomes in an already stretched health system.

Let me explain.

Continue reading

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From supervised toothbrushing to sugar taxes: global lessons for a fairer, smarter Australian dental system

By Associate Professor Roisin McGrath (MPH 2011, PhD 2019, GCertUniTeach 2021)

Australia’s dental care system delivers world-class outcomes – if you can afford it. But, for too many people, basic dental care is out of reach. The good news is we don’t need to start from scratch to get better results. We can learn from what works globally and adapt it to our local context to build a more sustainable, inclusive framework for dental care.

The earlier we reach children with preventive care, the more likely they are to avoid costly and complex dental issues later in life.

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Could gum disease cause dementia?

By Bianca Nogrady

The human mouth is home to an estimated six million bacteria from more than 700 species. Amid this teeming morass of bacterial diversity, one species has caught the attention of molecular microbiologist Associate Professor Catherine Butler, Principal Research Fellow at the Melbourne Dental School – Porphyromonas gingivalis.

Most people working in the dental field know this bacterium for its key role in gum disease, but Associate Professor Butler’s research suggests P. gingivalis plays a far more sinister role as a possible contributor to the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

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The next dental revolution: regrowing teeth

By Bianca Nogrady

The loss of a baby tooth is generally a cause for celebration.

In Western folklore, it’s accompanied by a visit from the ‘tooth fairy’ and the new gap-toothed grin being captured in family photographs. However, in that gap, a new tooth is already emerging from the gum.

Losing an adult tooth is a very different experience. That loss can have profound physiological and psychological impacts, because adult teeth are not replaced by new teeth. But what if they could be?

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#WeMet@UniMelb:

A software engineer, physicist and chemistry student design the tooth filling of the future

By Jane Metlikovec

In March 2025, physicist Jake Willett, chemist Judy Chen, and software engineer-turned ESL instructor-turned mechanical engineer, Rob Graham, met for the first time to begin their unique collaboration. Their goal was clear – to potentially discover a next-generation ‘super dental resin composite’.

Funded by the Australian Government’s National Industry PhD Program, industry partner SDI and a University of Melbourne stipend, they work as a team to more efficiently drive their innovative research project.

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Award-winning researcher and teacher, Dr Kaunein’s passion for oral health equity

By Jane Metlikovec

It’s 9am in Chennai, India, and new dental intern Dr Nadia Kaunein has just begun seeing the day’s patients at the dental hospital in her university.

Although it’s early, the dental hospital is flooding with patients because the burgeoning working class is unable to afford quality private dental care, no matter the pain or emergency.

They come to dental hospitals based within universities for cheap or free treatment.

As she witnesses the steady stream of patients presenting with various oral conditions – including cancers due to things like betel nut chewing, smokeless tobacco use and tobacco smoking as well as everyday abscesses from poor oral health – Dr Kaunein knows where her career is headed.

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From clinic to code:

how one award-winning PhD researcher is making cancer detection faster with AI

By Jane Metlikovec

“Say you’re a patient, and you’ve noticed something is a little different in your mouth,” Mr Rishi Ramani says.

“And so, you wait for a week or two, then you go to a dentist.

The dentist might then decide you need to go to a specialist, but there are only 50 of those specialists in the entire country.

So, you wait for, say, six months. That is many months of stress and anxiety, and in that time, it might be nothing, or you might have a condition that’s progressing.”

“Imagine if that first dentist you see could do a simple noninvasive image-based screening, right there in the chair, and put those images straight into an AI system that can provide an accurate diagnostic result immediately, right then and there.”

That’s the goal that Mr Ramani - who trained as a dentist earlier in his native India - has been working towards through his PhD at Melbourne Dental School, with his work recently published in Nature Portfolio, and winning the Global Oral Cancer Forum poster competition in Kuala Lumpur, 2024.

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Why cultural safety is core to dental care

By Florienne Loder

“One of the first realisations I had that I was poor growing up, was actually a dental situation,” says Patrick Mercer (A BA Melb), a proud Wadawurrung man from Ballarat and Geelong and First Nations lecturer at the Melbourne Dental School.

Mr Mercer broke two front teeth as a 13-year-old whilst playing footy.

“My friends at school were like, ‘Oh, it’s fine. You’ll just get a cap glued on. It’s an easy fix’,” he recalls. Mr Mercer had to wait weeks for his teeth to be repaired. When he did receive care, he wasn’t terribly happy with it as the cap “seemed too big and it didn’t sit in my mouth right. But I took whatever help I could get for what my family could afford.”

Many First Nations people face cultural and structural barriers to obtaining dental care.

These personal experiences, but also his qualifications as an archeologist and experience working in First Nations health advocacy and research, have led Mr Mercer to teach about cultural safety and the impacts of colonialism on First Nations people at the Melbourne Dental School.

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Building a culture of collaboration in oral healthcare for the best possible care

By Florienne Loder

“I think for me, it was a natural fit,” says Claire Mustchin of her role as the Melbourne Dental School’s Curriculum Coordinator with the Collaborative Practice Centre. Ms Mustchin, a Senior Lecturer in Dental Public Health, is an oral health therapist with a Master of Public Health and a Graduate Certificate in Educational Design.

The Collaborative Practice Centre (CPC), a strategic initiative of Advancing Health 2030, has developed the ‘Ways Curriculum’ for interprofessional collaborative practice for the Faculty of Medicine Dentistry and Health Sciences, and Ms Mustchin has been tasked with embedding this in the oral health and dentistry curriculum.

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The pains and gains of dental history at the Melbourne Dental Museum

By Jane Metlikovec

Have you ever seen an image of Apollonia? She is the Patron Saint of Dentists who died in 249 AD. She is usually represented with pliers in her hands holding an extracted tooth giving dentistry a branding problem.

According to Dr Jacky Healy, Director Faculty Museums and Curator of the Henry Forman Atkinson Dental Museum on the ground floor of Melbourne Dental School, the association of dentistry and suffering is hard to break.

“The early days of dentistry were defined by extraction and pain,” says Dr Healy.

In moving away from the pain of the past, the real history of dentistry comes to life.

“Something that is really important to know about dentistry is that it’s always been a place of innovation, right from the very beginning,” says Dr Healy.

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Game-changing dental implants to be advanced at new university MedTech centre

By Jane Metlikovec

It’s a familiar sight to dentists worldwide – an elderly patient suffering with missing teeth or loose dentures, and without enough bone left in their jaw to support a traditional dental implant.

“They’re in frequent pain, it’s a struggle to eat, and their health and wellbeing takes a hit.”

“Sure, many could go through a bone graft, where bone is taken from their chin or elsewhere in their jaw or hip to build up the bone in their mouth, in a process known as autogenous grafting,” says Melbourne Dental School’s Roy Judge (MDS 1997, PhD 2006), an Associate Professor in Prosthodontics.

There are other graft solutions, too. But the process can be painful and protracted over weeks or months and carries its own risks. For some, especially older patients, it’s a bridge they’re not willing to cross, and for others, it’s sometimes too risky for them to even be given the choice.

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Dr Vui Tan receives Ephraim Ehrmann Prize: Honouring a pioneer and migrant

By Jane Metlikovec

When Dr Vui Tan (DCD 2018) was announced as the recipient of the Ephraim Ehrmann Prize in Endodontics, she was humbled and a little awed. Dr Ernst ‘Effy’ Ehrmann was something of a legend when she was on campus.

The award, given to a postgraduate student with exceptional performance, integrity and passion for the field, is named after a man whom Dr Tan never met, but whose work continues to shape her profession.

“I wasn’t a student at the University of Melbourne during Effy’s time, but his name was so constant in conversations on campus that I quickly learned a lot about him,” says Dr Tan. The growth in the field of Endodontics today is built on the groundwork Effy laid decades ago, long before Dr Tan joined Melbourne Dental School and was awarded the prize in 2018.

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School and alumni awards

We extend our heartfelt congratulations to our esteemed alumni and dedicated students and staff members who received national and international awards, such as from the Royal Australasian College of Dental Surgeons; at the 2025 American Association of Orthodontists Annual Session and from the World Federation of Orthodontists.

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Keep in touch As a member of our alumni community you can access an extensive range of events and benefits, both locally and internationally.

Get in touch with us at: MDHS-alumni@unimelb.edu.au alumni.unimelb.edu.au facebook.com/unimelb facebook.com/MDHS.unimelb au.linkedin.com/company/melbournedentalschool @unimelb MelbUni1853

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