PAUL SIMPSON: From Down-and-Out to Up-and-Coming

Thomas Sing: the Youngest Member of the Prestigious Oral Design Group

Born and trained in Germany, Thomas Sing is the youngest member of the world-renowned Oral Design Group, established...See more in 1982. The Group is comprised of almost 100 highly skilled technicians worldwide who are hand picked by Founder Willi Geller and devoted to teaching and practicing the highest level of esthetic, functional dentistry. For Sing, who was named a member this year, the Oral Design Group is like a family, with all the members sharing their skills, experience and passion for dental technology. "All over the globe, Oral Design members form connections and inspire each other to help patients," he says. "Dental esthetics is more than making teeth; it's about reestablishing shapes, colors, traits that once were part of a person´s identity to help restore this integrity and self esteem." Sing, also a talented pianist, is artistic by nature and always knew he would have a creatively demanding career. Early on, he was largely self taught, learning ceramic layering through books, watching lectures and as he says, "many, many mistakes." He's won several international dental competitions and in 2008, he became a Master Dental Technician, graduating from the Master School for Dental Technology in Munich. "The school system for dental technology in Germany is great!" says Sing. "We learned absolutely every step—anatomy, physics, chemistry and material science—all of which are so important. How can you create the optimal occlusal surface without knowing the theory of bones and anatomy?" In 2009, he moved to Boston to be a visiting lecturer for the Post Doctoral Program for Prosthodontics at Tufts University of Dental Medicine and work for Drs. Kenneth Malament, Dan Nathanson, Hans-Peter Weber and Mo Taheri in their Boston Prosthodontics Dental Group laboratory. This year, he transformed that laboratory into Oral Design New England. Sing loves dental technology because "every day is different, as is every case. This field is not always easy but I never gave up and I've been very lucky. I couldn't imagine doing anything else."