He has made seminal contributions to understanding the mechanisms of pain and how pain can be controlled in both normal and patho-physiological conditions and how to translate basic science to the patient. He has supervised 18 completed PhD students and makes a major contribution to undergraduate science and medical teaching. He is a founding and continuing member of the London Pain Consortium, a Wellcome Trust Integrated Physiology Initiative and now a Strategic Award, funding a group of scientists in London and Oxford studying pain mechanisms and training young scientists in integrated approaches to the study of pain from genes to function. He is training director of the programme. Prof. Dickenson was a member of the Council of the International Association for the Study of Pain for 6 years and is an associate editor for the journal Pain. He is a regular assessor of grant applications for the MRC, BBSRC, Wellcome Trust, Human Frontiers Programme and is a member of the research committee of INSERM, France.
He has been a member of the Medical Research Council Postgraduate Assessment Committee, the Brain Research Association National Committee, The International Association for the Study of Pain, Scientific Commission and the UK Pain Society Executive Committee as well as the Scientific commission of the European Federation of Pain Societies.
He has authored more than 250 refereed publications including Science and Nature, edited 3 books and written numerous chapters. He has made many media appearances including BBC1, 2 and Channel 4 and spoken at the Royal Institution.
Prof. Dickenson has given plenary lectures at the World Congress on Pain, the European Pain Congress, the US National Pain Forum and numerous Pain Societies including the ASEAN, American, Canadian, Belgium, Scandinavian, British, Thailand, Irish and the Australian Pain Societies and at many other international and national meetings. He also speaks to GPs, at hospices and to schools. He was elected into the Academy of Medical Sciences in 2007 and was made an Honorary Member of the British Pain Society in 2009 for ‘an outstanding contribution to the alleviation of pain through personal endeavour and through his work for the Society’.