The University of Otago Faculty of Dentistry holds its fourth annual Clinical and Research Excellence Symposium on 16–17 September 2026 at the Hutton Theatre, Tūhura Otago Museum, Dunedin, with livestream, showcasing staff and postgraduate clinical and research work alongside international keynote presentations.
The Faculty of Dentistry Clinical and Research Excellence Symposium runs Wednesday 16 and Thursday 17 September 2026 at the Hutton Theatre, Tūhura Otago Museum in central Dunedin, with an online livestream option. Now in its fourth year, the two-day meeting showcases the clinical excellence and research achievements of the University of Otago's Faculty of Dentistry, pairing keynote presentations from international researchers and clinicians with case and research presentations from Otago staff and students. The 2026 international keynote is Emeritus Professor Frauke Müller of the University of Geneva, the 2026 Sir Thomas K Sidey Visiting Professor, speaking on oral healthcare in super-aging societies. CPD points are available for all sessions.
The symposium is organised by the University of Otago Faculty of Dentistry and its research arm, the Sir John Walsh Research Institute (the event is also known as the SJWRI Research Day). The Faculty is New Zealand's national centre for dentistry and its only school of dentistry. Enquiries are handled by the postgraduate dentistry office. The 2026 edition is supported by industry sponsors including Dentsply Sirona, Ivoclar, Lumino the Dentists, MAS, Neoss, Pharmaco Dental, Solventum and Straumann.
The organiser explicitly welcomes anyone interested in cutting-edge dental and oral health research and clinical practice: dental professionals and practitioners, biomedical researchers, the dental industry, research funders and research users. It is a hybrid event, so attendance is open both in person and online via livestream.
The confirmed venue is the Hutton Theatre, located within Tūhura Otago Museum on Great King Street in central Dunedin, close to the University of Otago campus and the city's north end. As context, central Dunedin concentrates the museum, university precinct and the bulk of the city's hotel and serviced-accommodation stock within a compact, walkable area, and Dunedin Airport lies roughly 30 km south-west of the city centre. Delegates travelling from other New Zealand centres or internationally typically route through Dunedin or nearby regional airports before transferring into the central city. This is background context on delegate movement only.
The symposium is a recurring, sponsor-backed medical/scientific congress anchored to New Zealand's only dental school, drawing a national and international audience of dental and biomedical professionals to Dunedin each September. As an established annual fixture using a dedicated museum theatre venue with hybrid delivery, it illustrates the role of university-linked specialist congresses in sustaining out-of-peak academic and health-sector business events in a regional New Zealand city.
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