President report

It was nice to catch up with many members at the ASE Pre-Congress Meeting before the FDI/ADA World Dental Congress held at the International Convention Centre Sydney on Saturday, 23 September. There were 96 people registered, including non-ASE members. I want to thank Dr V Gopi Krishna, from India, as the keynote speaker, Dr Anthony Au, the invited speaker, as well as Dr Kiran Kumar and Dr Francis Chan, who were the ASE Research Grant recipients in 2019 and 2020 and presented their research findings to our members. The ASE had a booth in the lower exhibition hall during the FDI World Dental Congress to promote the 8th Trans-Tasman Endodontic Conference (TTEC), which will be held at the Star in Gold Coast, Queensland, from 30 May to 1 June 2024. More information will be available soon, and you can check online at https://www.tteconference.com. Super early bird registration for the TTEC 2024 is open today, especially for the members who attended the AGM today. World Endodontic Day is a new initiative by IFEA (International Federation of Endodontic Associations) that will be celebrated annually on ‘October 16’ every year. IFEA has created World Endodontic Day to improve general awareness regarding dental health challenges posed by endodontic disease and to make the public understand various preventive and therapeutic measures taken by endodontists and general dentists to preserve the natural dentition. The 14th IFEA World Endodontic Congress 2024 will be held in Glasgow. The British Endodontic Society hosts it from 11 to 14 November 2024. More information is available from the website www.ifea2024glasgow.com. The 15th IFEA World Endodontic Congress 2026 will be held in Sydney and hosted by the ASE. This is a joint event between the IFEA and the ASE. An organising committee has been formed and chaired by Dr Bill Kahler. I want to thank Dr Kahler and other committee members for their contributions. The scientific committee also has been created and chaired by Dr William Ha. I also thank Dr Ha and other scientific committee members for their contributions. It is proposed to be held in September 2026 at the Sydney International Convention and Exhibition Centre. The ASE Dentistry Student Essay Competition is one of the ways to foster the teaching of endodontics within and outside the profession. The topic of the 2023 Dentistry Student Essay Competition was ‘Discuss the various forms of tooth resorption’, which was set by Emeritus Professor Paul V Abbott. Ten dental students from five different universities have participated. I want to congratulate the winner, Jordan Blum from the University of Melbourne and the runner-up, Yujia Wang from the University of Queensland, on their excellent submissions. I also thank Dr. Oliver Pope and Dr. Michael Yoon from Victoria for marking all these essays. This year, the ASE executive has decided to reinstate the research grants. All the applications have been assessed by the Research Grants Advisory Committee (RGAC), and the decisions will be forwarded to each applicant. The research grants will be then sent to the successful applicants based on the recommendations provided by the RGAC. There have been requests from the educational committee to set up an online platform on our federal ASE website to share teaching and learning materials for students from different dental schools across Australia. We have set up this platform on the ASE website and are currently in trial. I encourage the educators and students to register themselves and utilise this new initiative provided by the ASE. As many of you know, we are revising our constitution due to new government requirements in place. We are revising our constitution with a constitution lawyer, Dr Gautam Sridhar, who is also a dentist in Sydney. The ASE federal committee revised the first draft to Dr Sridhar, and we just received further comments and adjustments. We aim to finalise the draft constitution and send it to the membership for additional comments when ready. On behalf of the federal Executive of the ASE, I wish all our members a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.