Dr Sudheer Babu Balla is a dentist, academic, and researcher currently serving as a Lecturer (Teaching and Research) in Dentistry and Oral Health at La Trobe University, Bendigo. He is presently undertaking his PhD at La Trobe University, where his research focuses on an integrated co-design approach to improve the oral health and wellbeing of children from the Karen refugee community.

He completed his Master’s degree in Forensic Odontology at the University of Dundee, United Kingdom, and previously worked as an Assistant Professor in India, where he also conducted forensic age assessments among juvenile offenders and migrant children. His research has extensively focused on dental age estimation, particularly on developing robust methods to improve the assessment of children and adolescents involved in legal age disputes.

Dr Balla has authored more than 55 publications in international peer-reviewed journals, with over 500 citations and an h-index of 13. He has secured competitive research funding, including a VicHealth Collective Impact grant for a youth vaping prevention project in regional Victoria. He maintains strong international research collaborations across Europe and Asia and serves as a peer reviewer for several international journals.

His research interests span oral health promotion among culturally and linguistically diverse and refugee children, health inequalities, forensic age estimation, and the identification of human remains using dental evidence.