Rate My Professor Joanne Choi

Associate Professor Joanne Choi serves in the Department of Oral Rehabilitation within the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Otago. Her academic qualifications include a Bachelor of Dental Technology with Honours (BDentTech (Hon)), a Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Dental Technology (PGDipCDTech), and a PhD, all obtained from the University of Otago. Originally from Chungju, Korea, she immigrated to New Zealand at age 15 in 2002 to attend high school in Auckland. After completing her Bachelor of Dental Technology and honours year, during which she received the Dental Council prize for best research student, Choi worked for three years as a crown and bridge specialist at a dental laboratory in Christchurch. She returned to Otago in 2014 to pursue her PhD and Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Dental Technology concurrently, beginning her lecturing career by teaching first-year students during her doctoral studies. She advanced to Senior Lecturer and currently holds the position of Associate Professor, serving as Deputy Convenor of the Bachelor of Dental Technology programme. Her teaching responsibilities encompass the Bachelor of Dental Technology and Postgraduate Diploma in Clinical Dental Technology programmes, along with biomaterials and oral physiology lectures for Dental Surgery and Oral Health programmes at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She supervises research students at both levels and received the Sir John Walsh Research Institute (SJWRI) Undergraduate Research Supervisor of the Year Award in 2020.

Choi's research specializations include dental materials, dental technology, biomaterials, biomechanics, and craniofacial biology. She performs qualitative and quantitative analyses of mechanical properties and failure mechanisms in restorative dental materials such as resins, metals, ceramics, CAD-CAM, and 3D printed materials. Her work involves developing innovative restorative materials to improve oral care and real-time measuring systems for evaluating intraoral pH, temperature, and biomechanics, including pressure from dentures and appliances. For her PhD, she developed and validated a wired sensor system for long-term monitoring of intraoral pH and temperature to identify factors in dental wear. She contributes to the Biomechanics and Oral Implantology and Craniofacial Biology programmes at the SJWRI. Key publications comprise 'The evolution of high-strength ceramics: The role of microstructure and manufacturing' (2026, European Journal of General Dentistry), 'Influence of different post-washing parameters on the properties of additively-manufactured dental devices: A systematic review' (2026, Journal of Dentistry), 'Influence of different post-polymerization methods on the dimensional accuracy of additively manufactured dental crowns' (2025, Biomaterial Investigations in Dentistry), and 'Channel-pillars scaffold for bone regeneration: Structure design, manufacturing, and physicochemical properties' (2025, Journal of the Mechanical Behavior of Biomedical Materials).