Rate My Professor Sowmya Shetty

Dr. Sowmya Shetty is a Senior Lecturer, Director of Teaching and Learning, and Discipline Lead for Oral Biosciences in the School of Dentistry at the University of Queensland. She earned a Bachelor of Dental Surgery from Mangalore University, a Masters (Extended) in Conservative Dentistry and Endodontics from Rajiv Gandhi University of Health Sciences, and a Doctor of Philosophy from King's College London, with her thesis titled Understanding the reliability of all-ceramic zirconia restorations. As a teaching-focused academic, she coordinates interprofessional education initiatives, including the HLTH1000 course (Professional, People and Healthcare), and leads the Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences' interprofessional curriculum embedded in approximately 40 undergraduate and postgraduate programs in 2024. She delivers dental materials education in the early years of the dentistry program, fosters student-staff partnerships for course design and assessment, and develops open educational resources and custom open access textbooks.

Her research focuses on dental materials testing methodologies, dentine permeability and its relation to tooth sensitivity and bonding, virtual surface mapping in tooth wear, CAD/CAM, fatigue test design, and fracture surface analysis. Key publications include co-authored books Communication Essentials in Dentistry (2024, with Wei Chen, Raewyn Huang, Wei Qi Zhang, Jessica Zachar) and Dentistry Environment Essentials (2022, with Nicole Stormon, Tachae Douglas-Miller); journal articles such as The Effect of Long-term Dressing with Calcium Hydroxide on the Fracture Susceptibility of Teeth (2018, Journal of Endodontics), Alkaline Material Effects on Roots of Teeth (2017, Materials), Resistance to Compressive Force in Continuous Chelation (2021, Australian Endodontic Journal), and Short-term International Dental Experiences in Undergraduate Dental Students at an Australian University (2022, European Journal of Dental Education). She has presented at conferences including the International Association for Dental Research and Asian Conference on Education. Sowmya Shetty has garnered awards for teaching excellence: University Award for Programs that Enhance Learning (2023, Early Years Experiential Learning in Dentistry team), HABS Teaching Award for Programs that Enhance Learning (2024, IPCP team), HABS Excellence in Clinical and Professional Skills Education Award (2022, UQ Dental Clinical Simulation Team), and HABS Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2022).