Educator, Mentor & Leader

Craniofacial and cleft surgery cannot be learned from a textbook. It is passed from surgeon to surgeon, in the operating room and at the planning table, over years. Dr Dipesh Rao considers this transfer of skill and judgement one of the central responsibilities of his career.

He teaches and mentors maxillofacial and craniofacial surgeons in training, both within his own unit and at meetings across the world. His teaching deliberately centres on the things that are hardest to acquire — accurate diagnosis, sound surgical planning, and the judgement to manage complexity — rather than isolated technique. His conviction is simple: a surgeon is made not by the operations they can perform, but by the decisions they can be trusted to make.

This philosophy is shaped by his own training under some of the field's leading figures, and by his belief that Indian surgeons deserve access to the same standard of mentorship he received in Melbourne and Oxford.

Leadership in the specialty

Dr Rao holds elected and appointed positions in the national and international bodies that govern and educate oral and maxillofacial surgery. These roles place him among those who set training standards and shape the direction of the specialty, particularly across the Asia-Pacific region.

IAOMS Educational Board Committee — Asia-Pacific member (2024–2028). The International Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons' educational body, responsible for training standards worldwide.

AOMSI Representative to the IAOMS (2026–2028). Representing the Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons of India on the global council.

Next Gen IAOMS — Asia-Pacific Representative to the Council (2019–2021).

AOMSI Executive Committee — elected member (2021–2023).

AOMSI Fellowship Committee — member, helping shape how the next generation of Indian maxillofacial surgeons is examined and certified.

AO CMF — Regional Faculty.

SORG — National Faculty.

FRCSIT (International Facial Plastic Society) — Faculty and full member.

Invited faculty across three continents

Dr Rao is a regular invited speaker, panellist and workshop faculty at major cleft and craniofacial meetings, and has been invited to teach across Asia, Europe and Australia — a reach that reflects the international standing of his work on cleft and craniofacial outcomes.

His lectures are drawn from his own case series and research, and focus on the areas where he has developed particular expertise: cleft maxillary advancement and its relationship to velopharyngeal function, the management of craniofacial microsomia, orthognathic planning in cleft patients, and virtual surgical planning. He has presented and taught at meetings including the International Conference of Maxillofacial Surgery in Rio de Janeiro, ANZAOMS in Australia and New Zealand, the Chang Gung Memorial cleft meeting in Taiwan, reconstructive surgery updates in Vietnam, and the annual conferences of the Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons of India, where he has served as workshop master for Virtual Surgical Planning.

Research that informs teaching

Dr Rao's teaching is grounded in his own published research. He has authored fourteen papers in peer-reviewed indexed journals, several as corresponding author, in the International Journal of Oral & Maxillofacial Surgery, The Cleft Palate–Craniofacial Journal, Clinical Genetics and others, alongside book chapters on alveolar bone grafting and cleft lip.

His work examines the questions that matter at the planning table — cleft surgical outcomes, anterior maxillary distraction, the relationship between maxillary advancement and velopharyngeal function, and, most recently, next-generation phenotyping in craniofacial syndromes. His full publication record is available via ORCID: 0000-0003-2362-2366.

A teaching unit

Dr Rao practises and teaches at the Cleft Leadership Centre at Bhagwan Mahaveer Jain Hospital, Bengaluru — a unit that has trained over twenty-five cleft surgeons from around the world and holds one of only a small number of Cleft Leadership Centre designations globally. Working within an established teaching environment allows him to combine clinical care, mentorship and research in one place, and to help build the next generation of surgeons capable of delivering this care across India.