Ashraf F. Fouad, DDS, MS, has been appointed chair of the School of Dentistry Department of Endodontics following a national search. He will also serve as the Endodontics program director.

Fouad joins UAB from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, where he was the Freeland Distinguished Professor and Vice Chair of Comprehensive Oral Health in the Adams School of Dentistry. He earned his DDS, Certificate of Endodontics and MS at the University of Iowa.

“I am very excited about joining the School of Dentistry and look forward to the many opportunities UAB has to offer,” Fouad said. “I am eager to promote and foster collaboration between Endodontics and other departments and disciplines in the school and across the campus within the areas of service, education and scholarship.”

Dean Russell Taichman credits the search committee led by Department of Periodontology Chair Nicolaas Geurs for identifying Fouad as the next head of the Endodontics Department.

“I applaud Dr. Geurs and the committee for leading a nationwide search that yielded an internationally known leader in the field of Endodontics,” Taichman said. “We are incredibly lucky to recruit Dr. Fouad to the UAB family and we look forward to helping him grow the department.”

Fouad is a diplomate and past president of the American Board of Endodontics and an associate editor of the Journal of Endodontics. His leadership included service as chair of the Department of Endodontics and vice-chair of the Division of Comprehensive Oral Health at UNC. He also served as an assistant, then an associate professor of Endodontology at the University of Connecticut Health Center and as chair of the Department of Endodontics, Prosthodontics and Operative Dentistry at the University of Maryland.

He is an American Association of Endodontists (AAE) featured speaker in the areas of pharmacology of antibiotics and endodontic microbiology. He has published over 85 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 22 textbook chapters, and 130 abstracts. He edited and co-authored the textbooks Endodontic Microbiology, now in its second edition, as well as the fifth and sixth editions of Endodontics: Principles and Practice. In 2017, he received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Pulp Biology and Regeneration Group of the International Association of Dental Research.

His appointment will begin in September 2020.