Professor Rui Amaral Mendes is a graduate of the University of Porto and holds a PhD in Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and Pathology from the VU Universiteit Amsterdam. 

He has held positions as Professor of Oral Medicine, Oral Oncology and Oral Surgery at the Catholic University of Portugal, where he was also Clinical Director of the University Dental Clinic, Director of the Integrated Master in Dental Medicine and Director of Specialized Master's Degree in Oral and Maxillofacial Medicine and Pathology. 

He was also Visiting Clinical Associate Professor at the University of Michigan (until 2014). 

In August 2015 he left these positions for a position at Case Western Reserve University (Cleveland, OH, USA) and in 2019 he was appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor of Oral and Maxillofacial Medicine at Tehran University of Medical Sciences.

He is an Associate Editor of both the British Medical Journal - Case Reports and the Journal of Oral Pathology and Medicine, and a member of the editorial board of Oral Diseases. He is also an active reviewer for the main scientific journals of Oral and Maxillofacial Medicine and Surgery.

Fellow of the International Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and of the International Academy of Oral Oncology, he was actively involved in the V World Workshop on Oral Medicine, as a member of the “Genetics/epigenetics of oral mucosal premalignancy” workgroup.

He served as Chair of the Osteonecrosis Section of the Oral Care Study Group, Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer/International Society of Oral Oncology (MASCC/ISOO) and is currently a member of the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO).