Maria Cadenas

Maria Cadenas de Llano Perula is a university professor and orthodontist at KU Leuven. She heads the university's Orthodontics unit within the Department of Oral Health Sciences and is involved in postgraduate education, clinical orthodontics and scientific research.

Her clinical work includes orthodontic treatment of patients with complex dental and craniofacial conditions, particularly cleft lip and palate, craniofacial syndromes, congenitally missing teeth, enamel and dentin abnormalities, and dental trauma. She has worked as a clinical orthodontist since 2012, according to a KU Leuven faculty profile.

Main research interests:

Her research focuses on several important areas of contemporary orthodontics:
- Biology of orthodontic tooth movement: understanding how periodontal tissues respond to orthodontic forces.
- Root resorption: investigating biological markers that may help assess this complication during orthodontic treatment.
- Clear aligner predictability: studying how reliably aligners produce the planned tooth movements and how attachments influence treatment outcomes.
- Impacted maxillary canines: investigating artificial intelligence tools to predict eruption pathways and improve treatment planning.
- Cleft lip and palate: researching craniofacial development, dental anomalies and treatment outcomes in affected patients.