What Varun Solanki, DEN ’21, remembers most from his childhood visits to the dentist in India was the feeling of vulnerability. As he nervously but obediently sat in the dental chair with a stranger’s hands feeling around the inside of his mouth, he asked himself, “If I was a dentist, how would I help patients who feel as frightened and exposed as I do?” His commitment to becoming a patient-centric dentist began in that moment.
Photo by Joseph V. Labolito
People in North Philadelphia need dental care. Kornberg is here for them. Temple is standing as a pillar of hope.”
Today, Solanki is an assistant professor of restorative dentistry at Temple University’s Kornberg School of Dentistry, where he is one of the school’s youngest full-time faculty members and a specialist in treating medically complex patients and adults with special needs.
His journey included stops to earn a bachelor of dental surgery degree at Maharashtra University of the Health Sciences in India, a preceptorship and residency at UCLA, and ultimately an advanced standing DMD at Kornberg.
A career in higher education isn’t the job outcome that most dental students seek. For many, the goal is a comfortable private practice. Solanki, however, craved something more—a career with deeper satisfactions, greater challenges and opportunities to live up to his commitment to serve the vulnerable. The only career pathway with the breadth he was seeking? Clinical care, research and teaching at Kornberg.
Ticking that first box—helping as many patients as possible—was part of what drew Solanki to Temple as a prospective student.
“When I was looking at dental schools, what was really important for me was the patient load and the patient population,” he said. “Choosing Temple had everything to do with the fact that I knew I was going to see a lot of patients. That was my number one criterion. I did not want to stay idle, and I wanted to help as many people as possible.”
College: Kornberg School of Dentistry
Degree: DMD, dentistry (advanced standing program for internationally trained dentists), 2021
Industries: Dentistry, higher education
Hometown: Pune, India
A long-distance runner, Varun completed the New York City Marathon and the Philadelphia Marathon in 2022—races that are only 14 days apart.
Varun is also trained in the tabla, an Indian classical percussion instrument. He finds this practice helpful for his mental and physical hand-eye coordination and boosts his creativity as well.
Despite having a mother who is a teacher, Solanki didn’t fully grasp the potential rewards of teaching until he earned a position as a teaching assistant in his senior year at Kornberg in 2020. He connected immediately with his students, and he soon realized that he could exponentially expand his impact as a dentist by teaching students from around the world, each of whom would return to their communities and, in turn, improve the lives of innumerable future patients.
“My mom works hard,” Solanki said, “but she never came home unhappy. One day, before I left for dental school, I asked her how that was possible. She said, ‘Varun, sharing will give you the biggest happiness; if you come home having shared a little piece of knowledge to students, you’re never going to have a bad day.’” It wasn’t long after he started his teaching assistant position that he understood the accuracy of his mother’s words.
“At the Kornberg School of Dentistry,” he said, “every day is a good day.”
