Jeff Yengopal is the 2016 recipeint of the Tony Volpe Award Prof Yengopal is a HOD and Chief Specialist in Community Dentistry at Wits. He completed his undergraduate training at UWC and spent 10 years in private practice in Durban. He left private practice to take up a registrar post at Stellenbosch (now UWC) and its locality to the Cochrane Centre at the MRC in Tygerberg created the opportunity for him to get involved in evidence based medicine. He received training at the Cochrane centre and in 2003 whilst still a registrar, he approached the then editor  of the SADJ, Prof Usuf Chikte, to write a monthly column called Evidence Based dentistry in Clinical practice for the journal. The editor, despite his initial reservations, gave him the opportunity and this column became a popular read among clinicians and 12 years later, he continues to write this column. He has vast experience in systematic reviews, research methodology and critical thinking. He has published extensively on this topic and has presented both locally and internationally. He heads a department that wants to establish itself as a centre for excellence in research and has developed oral hygienists, dental therapists, dentists and specialists as seasoned researchers.  He is an immediate past president of the IADR and strongly believes that we in Africa, have the expertise, the burden of disease, the setting and the drive to make us a global power in terms of oral health research.