Head of School's Welcome
Professor Alastair J Sloan BSc, PhD, FHEA, FRSB
Our Mission:
The Mission of the Melbourne Dental School is to be a world-class, research-based school, offering education of the highest quality and to play a leading national and international role with particular relevance to the Asia-Pacific region.
Background:
Alastair Sloan is Head of School at the Melbourne Dental School, Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Health Sciences and is Professor of Tissue Engineering and Dental Biology.
Prior to joining the University of Melbourne Alastair was Professor of Tissue Engineering and Bone Biology at the School of Dentistry, Cardiff University, UK where he was Head of School from 2017-2020. Prior to this he was Director of the Cardiff Institute for Tissue Engineering & Repair (CITER) from 2015-2017, a cross-University research network. Alastair is a bioscientist who has been involved in oral/dental education and research for over 20 years.
He obtained his BSc in Biomedical Sciences from the University of Wales in 1993 and his PhD in Oral Biology and Pathology from The University of Birmingham, UK in 1997, where he undertook his PhD in the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry. Following postdoctoral research he held a Lectureship in Oral Biology at the School of Dentistry, The University of Birmingham in 2000 before joining Cardiff University in 2005.
Alastair’s research is focussed on the regeneration of mineralised tissues and the behaviour and therapeutic use of dental pulp stem cells. He is interested in the cellular and molecular responses of these cells to biomatrices and compromised biological environments to understand their functional behaviour during tissue injury. Complimentary to this work, his lab is also focussed on bacterial invasion and attachment in mineralised tissue infections and novel drug delivery mechanisms for antimicrobial agents.
He has been awarded over £4.5M in external research funding to date and published over 80 peer reviewed research publications.
Alastair was awarded the IADR Distinguished Scientist Award (Young Investigator) in 2011 in recognition of his research and holds Visiting Professorships at the Airforce Medical University, Xi’an, China, China Medical University, Shenyang, China, University College Cork, Ireland and Cardiff University, UK. He is a Past-President of the Pulp Biology and Regeneration Group of the IADR, Past Chair of the IADR Constitution Committee and currently sits on the Grant Assessment Panel of the NC3Rs (UK) EU Eureka Eurostars panel and Research Foundation Flanders.