DENTAL CARE IMPROVEMENTS USING INFORMATICS AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Professor Heiko Spallek
Head of School and Dean of The University of Sydney School of Dentistry &
Member of Scientific Advisory Committee, Dentroid
RESEARCHER PROFILE
Filmed in Sydney, Australia | December 2024
Professor Heiko Spallek is the Head of School and Dean of the Sydney Dental School, as well as a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for Dentroid, a startup in Australia aiming to revolutionise dentistry with laser technology. He has gained extensive experience in various roles at research-intensive institutions across three different continents.
Professor Spallek advanced his dental knowledge by studying computer information science in the US, particularly in Philadelphia. He conducted research for 20 years in the US at the intersection of dentistry and informatics.
As the Dean of Dentistry, he remains involved with a group in the US focused on improving dental care through informatics and artificial intelligence. In Australia, he finds the opportunity to work with Dentroid particularly engaging, as the startup seeks to enhance dental care by eliminating needles and drills to reduce patient discomfort.
Professor Spallek notes that there haven’t been significant changes in dentistry over the past few decades, aside from incremental improvements. He finds it both challenging and interesting to address the stagnation in the field, despite the availability of better materials in dentistry.
He points out that traditional dental treatments still heavily rely on local anaesthesia administered through long needles, as well as high-pitched noises and vibrations from hand pieces, which create discomfort for patients. Furthermore, dentists often have to hunch over patients’ mouths, exposing themselves to infectious spray.
Dentroid is attempting to create a paradigm shift by starting treatments with a light-induced analgesic, followed by a small robot that clamps onto the tooth, removing tissue without the need for drilling through laser technology. This procedure is guided and controlled by the dentist from a desk. Professor Spallek collaborates with researchers from four leading institutions in Australia to bring this new vision to life.
Outside of his professional responsibilities, Professor Spallek prioritises his family and serves as a volunteer director for Community Connections Australia. This organisation offers a range of tailored services to individuals living with disabilities. With the support of a management team, their 150 frontline workers assist approximately 300 clients in achieving greater independence in their homes.
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Novel silk-based biomaterials for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine
Dr Jelena Rnjak-Kovacina is a Scientia Associate Professor and ARC Future Fellow leading a multidisciplinary group at the Graduate School of Biomedical Engineering, UNSW Sydney in Australia.
Her research interests are at the interface of biology and engineering, focusing on the development of biomimetic materials that direct cellular interactions for enhanced vascularisation and for the treatment of cardiovascular disease. In particular, she develops novel silk-based biomaterials and investigates how biomaterial properties translate to biological outcomes.
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Relationship between mental illness and mental wellbeing
Since 2015, Dr Matthew Iasiello has been working on the development and dissemination of mental wellbeing interventions across the Australian community at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute (SAHMRI). His PhD research was designed specifically to strengthen the translational work conducted by SAHMRI, and to solve problems that represented gaps in the literature that were arising when delivering mental wellbeing interventions into the community. The impact and relevance of Dr Iasiello’s work has been demonstrated with invited presentations at international academic conferences, and multiple media stories with significant online engagements.
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Muscle Cell Communication and Repair
Dr. William Roman is a Group Leader at the Australian Regenerative Medicine Institute (ARMI) at Monash University. He obtained his PhD from Paris Descartes University and Freie University of Berlin, focusing on nuclear positioning during skeletal muscle development. Dr. Roman’s research journey has taken him across the globe, including postdoctoral work in Barcelona, tissue engineering in Lisbon, and a brief stint at Stanford University.
At ARMI, Dr. Roman leads innovative research on intercellular communication within muscle organs. His work involves growing human muscles on chips to understand how skeletal muscle cells interact with neurons and tendons. This research aims to develop better models for studying muscle diseases, drug screening, and even applications in cellular agriculture and biorobotics.
