School News
November, 2007
Professor Grant Townsend invited to be a Corresponding Member of The Finnish Dental Society Apollonia.
Professor Grant Townsend, Professor of Dental Science in the School of Dentistry, The University of Adelaide, was recently awarded the title of Corresponding Member of the Finnish Dental Society Apollonia, at a special President’s Dinner in his honour in Helsinki, Finland. The prestigious award is made to researchers who have contributed substantially to dental research in Finland through their collaborations with Finnish scientists.
In making the award to Professor Townsend, the President of the Finnish Dental Society, Professor Juha Varrela, said:
“The Finnish Dental Society Apollonia has a special membership category of Corresponding Member. Several distinguished scientists who have collaborated with Finnish dental researchers, and thereby made a substantial contribution to the dental research in Finland, have been invited as Corresponding Members of the Society. At the Annual Meeting on April 25, 2007, the General Assembly of The Finnish Dental Society decided to invite Professor Grant Townsend as a Corresponding Member of the Society. I have the pleasure and honor to introduce Professor Grant Townsend to you.
Grant comes from Australia, from the town of Adelaide. He is the Professor of Dental Science in the University of Adelaide, and has served as the Associate Dean of Student and Curriculum Matters and as the Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at the Adelaide Dental School. He has also served in the Editorial Board of no less than 11 scientific journals. Grant’s main interests in the dental research are tooth morphology, dental genetics, dentofacial development and more recently, dental education. Grant Townsend has collected and studied, together with his coworkers in Adelaide, two unique materials, one involving records of Australian Aborigines and the other records of Australian twins. His list of publications is truly impressive. Today, Grant is the leading author in the field of dental genetics.
Through his interest in tooth morphology and genetics, Grant established collaboration with Professor Lassi Alvesalo about 25 years ago. A special target in Grant’s and Lassi’s research has been the teeth and tooth development in patients with various chromosome abnormalities, and their collaboration has produced a number of important papers. In particular, their research findings have shed light into the role of the X and Y chromosomes in the human tooth development. Grant has visited Finland several times, and lectured in all four Finnish Dental Schools. Most remarkably, in 1986 he was brave enough to come to Finland to spend his sabbatical leave here, and even persuade his family, wife Maxine and three children, Kirsty, Adam and Ben, to come along. I guess that many of you may have forgotten that the winter 1986-1987 was particularly harsh, even in Finnish standards. However, I am sure that Maxine, Grant and their children will never forget that.
I will now hand out the Honorary Diploma of the Corresponding Member of Apollonia to Professor Grant Townsend.”
While in Finland, Professor Townsend also gave a keynote address on dental education at the Annual Congress of the Finnish Dental Society, attended by over 2,000 participants. The title of his address was “Dental education into the 21st century: the Adelaide experience.”
Following the meeting in Finland, Professor Townsend was invited to the University of Kaunas in Lithuania where he lectured on twin studies and discussed opportunities for future collaboration with researchers who have established a Twin Centre in Kaunas.
Professor Townsend is currently on study leave at the School of Dental Sciences, University of Liverpool, UK where he is establishing an international collaborative research centre in oro-facial genetics and development with Professor Alan Brook, Liverpool, and Professor Lassi Alvesalo, Finland.
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