The Faculty of Dentistry is one of the youngest faculties of the University of Szeged which has operated for four years as the twelfth individual faculty of the University of Szeged. Major prerequisites for the establishment of the faculty included the setting up of a research laboratory and the launching of a doctoral school, thus paving the way toward more direct inclusion of the clinical staff of the Faculty in research activities and increasing the number of instructors with a scientific degree.

In 2004, as a step in conversion into a faculty, we joined Dentistry Research Sub-programme no. 7/a of the Clinical Medical Doctoral School of the Faculty of Human Medicine of the University of Szeged, headed by professor Zoltán Rakonczay. In addition to regular Ph.D. students, students who are employees participate in the sub-programme as individual trainees, a total of 17 students. During its 4 years of operation, 8 persons of the doctoral school have defended their Ph.D. thesis (2 other students are in the middle of the defence process). Their publications serve as a basis for the respective Ph.D. theses. Our doctoral programme is aimed at preparing specialists capable of cultivating the theory and clinical practice of, and research into stomatology, so they can acquire a scientific degree and share knowledge with their younger colleagues, thereby actively taking part in the training of a new supply of researchers.

To a large extent, the increase in the number of scientific publications, as well as in participation in national and international conferences is related to the establishment of a stand-alone faculty-based doctoral sub-programme. The thematic topics supervised by our instructors, including a total of 27 special areas, cover the major research fields of advanced research into dentistry.

The research infrastructure presently available offers a suitable background for carrying out not only basic research but also clinical research in several special areas. Since 2001, the Research Laboratory has been a unit of the Department of Prosthetic Dentistry and Oral Biology (in the period between 2006 and 2008, it was a unit of the Department of Oral Biology), due to the fact that one of the research areas is closely related to prosthetic dentistry (namely, bio-integration of alloplastic materials).