[1] The institute is based on Gray's Inn Road in the Bloomsbury district of London, United Kingdom, adjacent to the Eastman Dental Hospital, with which it is closely associated.

[5][6] During the directorship of Professor Frank Wilson (1950–1959) a full department range was established at the Eastman, including children's, oral surgery, radiography and prosthetics.

[5][6] Under the directorship of Sir Robert Bradlaw (1959–1970), the Eastman's teaching concept was altered, with MSc courses of the University of London being introduced.

Postgraduates and staff are also engaged in research designed to have a wider impact on collective public health, such as antibiotic resistance, bone repair and food poisoning.

The Clinical Research Department focuses on the full spectrum of disorders of the head and neck region including disease of the oral mucosa, dentition, jawbones, salivary glands, cranial nerves, masticatory muscles and adjacent structures and organs.

[11] A subsequent paper[12] published in 2015 reported on a large study within Premier League and Championship football in 2014 of nearly 200 senior squad players from eight clubs.

Dr Adam Roberts, Senior Lecturer in Microbial Diseases at UCL Eastman Dental Institute, first launched crowdfunding project Swab and Send[13] in 2012 to search for new antibiotics with the help of the public.

For a small fee contributors are sent a swab kit enabling them to take a sample from any place in their environment where different bacteria may be competing for space and food.

In December 2015 his team assisted BBC programme Trust Me I'm a Doctor in investigating and debunking the widely held belief that male beards contain a stockpile of dangerous bacteria.

Most Eastman Dental Hospital staff and students are also eligible for full membership The library currently holds over 3,200 books, 70 locally held journal titles, and also has access to many e-journals, e-books and online databases.

[19] Both the institute and the Eastman Dental Hospital are part of UCL Partners, the largest academic health science centre in Europe.

In June 2016 it was reported in the Times Higher Education (THE) that hundreds of students who studied at the UCL Eastman Dental Institute between 2005-6 and 2013-14 had been given the wrong marks for their assessments.

[24] These administrative errors led to an unknown number of students being attributed with the wrong qualifications and, in some cases, being failed when they should have passed their degrees.