Rate My Professor Angela Benn

Angela Benn serves as a Professional Practice Fellow in the Discipline of Dental Public Health, Oral Sciences, Faculty of Dentistry, Health Sciences Division, at the University of Otago. She is also listed in the Oral Rehabilitation department and associated with the Office of the Head of Faculty (Dentistry). An experienced general dental practitioner, Benn earned her Bachelor of Dental Surgery (BDS) from the University of Otago between 1978 and 1983. She completed a Master of Community Dentistry (MComDent) in Oral Sciences at the same university around 2010 and obtained her PhD in dental public health and epidemiology from the University of Otago in 2023. Her doctoral thesis, "Oral health and distinct oral biofilms in a birth cohort in mid-life," utilized data from a longitudinal birth cohort study to investigate oral health trajectories and biofilm compositions.

Benn conducts research at the Sir John Walsh Research Institute, specializing in dental public health and oral epidemiology. Her academic interests encompass oral microbiomes, plaque composition and dental caries risk in midlife, associations of lifestyle factors like sex, oral hygiene, and smoking with oral species in distinct habitats, xerostomia prevalence and impact, and saliva's role in oral health. Key publications include "Plaque and Dental Caries Risk in Midlife" (Caries Research, 2022), co-authored with Nicholas C. K. Heng, W. Murray Thomson, and Jonathan M. Broadbent; "Associations of sex, oral hygiene and smoking with oral species in distinct habitats at age 32 years" (European Journal of Oral Sciences, 2022); "Studying the human oral microbiome: Challenges and the evolution of solutions" (Australian Dental Journal, 2017); "Occurrence and impact of xerostomia among dentate adult New Zealanders: Findings from a national survey" (2014); "Saliva: an overview" (New Zealand Dental Journal, 2014); "Dentigerous cysts of inflammatory origin: A clinicopathologic study" (1996); and "Amelogenesis imperfecta: Multiple impactions associated with odontogenic fibromas (WHO) type" (1990). These works reflect her long-standing contributions to clinical and epidemiological aspects of dentistry.