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Biography
Professor Sam Cadden graduated in Physiology and Dentistry at the University of Glasgow before undertaking his PhD at the University of Bristol under the supervision of Professor Bruce Matthews. Post-doctoral fellowships in Paris (as a Royal Society European Research Fellow) and Leeds followed before his arrival in Dundee as a Lecturer in Oral Biology in 1984. He was promoted to a Senior Lectureship in 1996 and to a Personal Chair in Oral Biology in 2002.
Professor Cadden, in addition to his work in Dundee, is currently the Associate Editor with responsibility for Review papers for the Archives of Oral Biology and is an Inspector for undergraduate degree programmes for the General Dental Council.
Research
Professor Cadden has been involved in neurophysiological research throughout his career. His principal interests have been: (i) pain and nociception; and (ii) the control of jaw muscles. He has published extensively in both fields.
Since the 1980s, Professor Cadden has led a Research Team in Dundee studying the control of jaw muscles and other aspects of masticatory function. The team consists of staff and postgraduate students and has strong collaborative links with the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. Previous links have included ones with King's College London and the University of Glasgow. Dundee dental students "intercalating" honours science degrees have regularly been incorporated into the team with considerable success.
Professor Cadden is a member of a number of research organisations and, since 2011, has been the UK Senior Member and a Member of the Advisory Board of the international Society of Oral Physiology (Store Kro Group).
Teaching
Professor Cadden has been involved in University teaching since 1978. Most of his teaching has been in the pre- and para-clinical components of undergraduate dental programmes (BDS) – particularly in Oral Biology, Physiology, Neuroscience & Biostatistics. He has also contributed regularly to other parts of the Dundee BDS programme as well as to undergraduate science programmes (in Physiology), postgraduate dental courses and continuing dental education.
From 1990 until 2012, Professor Cadden was responsible in a number of roles, for organising the 2nd year of the BDS programme in Dundee. During that time, he was largely responsible for promoting the highly successful "Intercalated" Honours Science Degree programme for dental undergraduates in Dundee.
In connection with his teaching, Professor Cadden has acted as an External Examiner in several other UK Dental Schools as well as in Schools in Hong Kong and France. He is a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy.
Since 2009, Professor Cadden has led a Dundee team involved in a Scotland-wide e-learning initiative funded by NHS Education for Scotland. The objective of the project has been to produce on-line materials which can supplement traditional teaching and learning techniques in dental education. In 2012, a web site entitled Scottish Dental Education On-line (SDEO) was launched to permit some of the learning resources from the project to be accessed on the world-wide web (see the 'External Links' tab).