30 October 2017
Professor Stephen Challacombe receives Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumni Award
Stephen J. Challacombe, Professor Oral Medicine at the King’s College London, received the 2017 Mayo Clinic Distinguished Alumni Award late October. The award acknowledges and shows appreciation for the exceptional contributions of Mayo alumni to the field of medicine.
Professor Challacombe was the Martin Rushton Professor of Oral Medicine at King’s College London and the University of London; a consultant in diagnostic microbiology and immunology to Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals; and Dean for External Affairs at King’s College London Health Schools. He is a fellow of King’s College London, the United Kingdom’s Academy of Medical Sciences, the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Surgeons of England.
Professor Challacombe has made significant contributions to the clinical speciality of oral medicine and to his research specialty of mucosal immunology. He is widely recognised as a translational scientist in oral medicine and has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers, 160 other publications and seven books.
Professor Challacombe was part of the management team that made the King’s College London Dental Institute an internationally competitive school in research. He established multiple interdisciplinary clinics that changed the management of oral disease and that have become nationally recognised centres of excellence. In more than 40 years at Guy’s and King’s College London, he has taught oral medicine to more than 5,000 dental students — a significant proportion of practicing dentists in the United Kingdom.
He has been President of the International Association for Dental Research, British Society for Oral and Dental Research, European Association of Oral Medicine, British Society for Oral and Dental Research, European Association of Oral Medicine, British Society for Oral Medicine, Hunterian Society, and Odonatological Section of the Royal Society of Medicine. He has been Chair of the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospitals Consultants Committee, International Steering Committee on Oral Manifestations of HIV Infection, and World Workshops on Oral Health & Disease in HIV/AIDS.
Professor Challacombe completed a fellowship in immunology research at Mayo Clinic School of Graduate Medical Education in Rochester, Minnesota, in 1979. He has a Doctor of Philosophy degree and Bachelor of Dental Surgery degree from the University of London. A native of London, Professor Challacombe has an Honorary Doctor of Science degree from the University of Athens, Greece.