Richard Ohrbach is a Professor in the Department of Oral Diagnostic Sciences, School of Dental Medicine, University at Buffalo. Education includes DDS (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill), certificate in Pain Management (University of California, Los Angeles), PhD in Clinical Psychology (University at Buffalo), and a residency in Behavioral Medicine and post-doctoral fellowship in Behavioral Epidemiology (University of Washington).
He is a member of American Academy of Orofacial Pain, International Association for Dental Research, United States Association for the Study of Pain, and International Association for the Study of Pain. He is the past director of the International RDC/TMD Consortium Network, now named INfORM, and the past Chair of the Translations Committee. He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences committee for temporomandibular disorders.
Research awards include an individual Physician Scientist Award from NIH and multiple U01 awards as part of multi-site research teams. One major research focus is diagnostic systems for TMD; he chaired two consensus workshops and participated in multiple closed workshops pertaining to orofacial pain diagnosis. He is a contributor to a chronic pain taxonomy and an orofacial pain taxonomy.
He has authored over 150 peer review publications, 32 books and book chapters, and over 100 research presentations. He is a statistics consultant for the Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry, member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Oral Rehabilitation, Annals of Behavioral Medicine, and Journal of Behavioral Medicine, and is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Oral & Facial Pain and Headache.

William Maixner, who passed away on November 2, 2020, was a friend, a colleague, and an inspiration. I am deeply honored and humbled to present his keynote at the AAOP meeting for 2021. Bill’s early research demonstrated the role of the baroreceptor reflex as part of pain regulation, and this homeostatic function was further investigated in subsequent research regarding identification of risk determinants for painful TMDs. A heuristic model – which incorporated genetic influences, environmental factors, psychological variables, and pain sensitivity variables for shared contributions to incident TMD – provided strong empirical support for painful TMDs as a complex disease. Further evidence supported the utility of the central sensitivity syndrome concept, and a corresponding profile assessment was developed. Genetic influences for the onset of painful TMDs are subtle and act to moderate the effects of intermediate phenotypes; similar genetic influences appear to moderate the efficacy of propranolol for facial pain. The available evidence suggests that personalized therapies can productively combine genetic insights with behavioral therapies in order to maximize the possibility of treating pain.