Tomorrow always comes on time

Professor Margaret Josephine Cox OBE is a true pioneer who saw, long before most of Thinkers, us, HAiDENERS, how computers and information technology could transform learning, teaching, and patient care.

From her early work with computers in education in 1969 at the University of Surrey to her leadership at King’s College London, she has quietly shaped the digital future of health professions education. Her vision has always been profoundly human: safer patients, more confident students, and fairer access to high‑quality learning. Through the groundbreaking hapTEL project, she created new possibilities for dental and healthcare students to practise with touch‑sensitive virtual patients—making mistakes without harm, repeating procedures until precision and judgment became second nature. ​ Across more than 50 years and over several hundreds of publications, Professor Cox has helped a generation of educators to think differently: more interactive, more evidence‑informed, and more responsive to digital‑native learners.

Her honours—OBE, Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of King’s College London, and the Odontology Presidential Award of the Royal Society of Medicine—reflect a career of sustained, selfless leadership. With deep admiration and gratitude, we, Thinkers now conferred via a Presidential Award at Helsinki summit on Professor Margaret Josephine Cox, honouring a scholar and educator whose work has given dentistry a safer, richer, and more compassionate digital future.