Head of School awarded for outstanding contribution to dentistry

Congratulations to Professor Alastair Sloan, Head of the Melbourne Dental School who was recently awarded the Ad Eundem Fellowship by the Faculty of Dentistry at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RSCI) for his outstanding contribution to dentistry.

RSCI is the national training body for surgery in Ireland and its Faculty of Dentistry has a core mission of advancing the science, art and practice of dentistry by the promotion of education, study and research

The Ad Eundem Fellowship is awarded to surgeons who, in the opinion of the College, have reached a standard in surgery commensurate with that of a practising consultant surgeon, of Good Standing, in Ireland at a similar stage of career.

Significantly, Professor Sloan is only the third non-clinician to receive the Ad Eundem Fellowship – a privilege earned through hard work and commitment to excellence.

Alastair's research is multi-disciplinary and in the broad field of mineralised connective tissues. He is interested in the reparative potential and behaviour of the dentine-pulp complex and bone, specifically the potential therapeutic manipulation of the dental pulp stem cells (DPSCs) and the cellular and molecular responses of these cells to natural biomatrices and compromised biological environments to understand their functional behaviour during tissue injury. He also has a long standing interest in developing novel in vitro / ex vivo organ 3D culture model systems for mineralising tissues to provide innovative models for tissue regeneration/engineering and testing of novel therapeutic agents and advancing the 3Rs (reduction, replacement refinement) in biomedical research and bioengineering.