In 2005, the University celebrated the inauguration of the first 8 Endowed Professorships,
a milestone in the University's history.
To date, a total of 120 Endowed Professorships have been established.
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Dr Tam Wah-Ching

Tam Wah-Ching Professorship in Dental Science

"I established this Professorship in the hope that it will further add to the strengths of the Faculty, and will train skilled, knowledgeable, and compassionate dental practitioners who will make valuable contributions to the community." 

Dr Tam Wah-Ching

Edward C M Lo

Edward C M Lo

Appointed in 2017

For many of Hong Kong’s increasingly elderly population, maintaining good dental hygiene and getting access to a dentist can sometimes be difficult. And for those with underlying medical conditions, financial restrictions and other issues, obtaining these basic medical needs can be nearly impossible. But breakthroughs in oral health care and community medicine have allowed the elderly and most vulnerable in our society to have better access to such basic needs, allowing early preventive measures and treatments.

Professor Edward Lo Chin-Man is the Chair Professor of Dental Public Health at the Faculty of Dentistry at The University of Hong Kong (HKU). Professor Lo is an internationally recognised expert in dental public health, community dentistry and preventive dentistry. He is also a world leader in the development of a new approach and technique in minimally invasive dentistry, especially for use in outreach dental services.

Professor Lo’s interest is in oral epidemiology, oral health care delivery and preventive dentistry. He has carried out many oral epidemiological surveys on various population groups and has also conducted many laboratory and clinical studies on new preventive and treatment methods for dental caries, including those for use in field settings.

His research team has produced high-quality clinical evidence, through conducting randomised controlled trials, supporting the use a non-surgical (non-restorative) approach to manage the prevalent oral health problem of decayed teeth in young children and the elderly. Through the use of various fluoride agents, such as painting silver fluoride solution on decayed tooth surfaces, tooth decay can be stopped and the need for dental fillings can be avoided in many cases. This has proven to be useful for treating young children who are usually afraid of receiving dental treatment in clinics and can be unco-operative, and for older patients who may have many general health problems.

Professor Lo also contributes significantly to the development of an outreach dental service to elderly homes in Hong Kong. He established a dental care delivery model to provide essential preventive and basic curative services in long-term care institutions for the elderly in Hong Kong. This model has been adopted by outreach dental teams funded by the government and is currently serving all long-term care institutions for the elderly in Hong Kong, benefitting tens of thousands of people every year.

He obtained his academic and specialist training in Hong Kong, including his PhD degree from HKU in 1995, and was later awarded a Fellowship of the Hong Kong Academy of Medicine. He was an Associate Professor at HKU (1998-2003), a Professor since 2003, and in 2012 was the first HKU BDS graduate of the Faculty to be conferred as Chair Professor. He was awarded the Outstanding Research Student Supervisor Award and the Outstanding Teaching Award in 2007 and 2012 respectively for his excellence in teaching. He is also a guest professor at a number of major dental schools in Mainland China. For his contributions to the field of community dentistry, Professor Lo was awarded the International Association of Dental Research (IADR) Distinguished Scientist Award in Geriatric Oral Research in 2016.

Professor Lo is the Chairman of the Specialty Board of Community Dentistry of the College of Dental Surgeons of Hong Kong (CDSHK). He was President of the CDSHK, President of the IADR Southeast Asian Division and that of the Asia-Pacific Region, and Treasurer of the IADR.

Professor Lo has published over 200 articles in internationally refereed Medline indexed journals, including the Journal of Dental Research. His articles have attracted more than 4,000 citations, garnering him an H-Index of over 35.


Lakshman Samaranayake

Appointed in 2010
Professor Lakshman Samaranayake is an educationist, administrator, researcher and specialist in infectious diseases. He has been the Dean of the Faculty of Dentistry for more than six years, as well as the Director of the Prince Philip Dental Hospital where the faculty is housed. The Faculty is the sole facility in Hong Kong that trains dentists and is highly acclaimed as one of the top dental institutions in the world. 

After graduating in dentistry in Sri Lanka, Professor Samaranayake specialised in infectious diseases and was awarded a Fellowship of The Royal College of Pathologists of the United Kingdom – a rare distinction for dentistry. After serving in the UK as a consultant microbiologist and a Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow, and then at the University of Alberta, he took up the position of Chair Professor of Oral Microbiology at The University of Hong Kong, where he has continued his seminal research on oral candidiasis, the commonest human fungal infection. His research group also investigates infections in medically compromised individuals.

Having authored more than 300 refereed papers on oral candidiasis, Professor Samaranayake is today considered the world’s foremost expert on the subject (BiomedExperts.com). Over the past three decades, he has contributed to the literature on oral fungal infections, infection control in dentistry, and oral microbial diseases through more than 400 original, peer-reviewed publications. He has also written five major texts and monographs, 50 review articles, and some 30 book chapters. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Investigative and Clinical Dentistry, and has delivered more than 200 scientific presentations as an invited speaker at seminars, workshops, and symposia in over 30 countries. 

Internationally, Professor Samaranayake was previously the Chairman of the Science Commission of the largest non-governmental organisation in dentistry – the International Dental Federation, in Geneva. 

He has served or currently serves as an Honorary Professor at the Eastman Dental Institute, University College, UK; an Advisory Professor at the Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, China; and a Consultant to the Council on Dental Practice for the American Dental Association. He also holds numerous other honorary university appointments, particularly in Asia. 

As an educationist and administrator at the Faculty of Dentistry, Professor Samaranayake has led a highly regarded and dynamic curriculum reform that is renowned in the region and Asia, which emphasises problem-based learning (PBL) as a method of imparting skills such as critical thinking and self-directed, life-long learning. In this context, he has served as a World Bank technical consultant in PBL, and is an advisor for more than 10 tertiary institutions in Asia. 

Professor Samaranayake has received many coveted awards for his contributions to science and academia. These include The University of Hong Kong’s Outstanding Researcher Award, Outstanding Research Student Supervisor Award, and Research Output Prize, as well as the Distinguished Scientist Award from the International Association for Dental Research, Washington DC, US. In 2007, he was awarded a Doctor of Science (honoris causa) by the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka – his alma mater – for his unique corpus of scientific work and contributions to the dental profession and society in general.