Dr Yakin is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK) and has over a decade of clinical and academic teaching experience in general and oral pathology, oral surgery, and oral medicine and diagnosis. He is currently the BDS 4 and 5 Program Director, BDS2 general pathology and BDS3 oral pathology module convenor at Adelaide Dental School. He also contributes to clinical tutoring in the BDS3 General Practice Unit. He also contributes to the supervision of DClinDent Oral Pathology presentations and slide seminars. In his previous role at Charles Sturt University, Dr Yakin was the subject coordinator of oral and general pathology and histology in addition to his role in clinical and preclinical tutoring in years 2-3 of the Bachelor of Dental Science course. He also delivered lectures in oral pathology and medicine to years 4 and 5 of the same course and year 3 of the Bachelor of Oral Health course.

Dr Yakin's research interests are in oral cancer tumour microenvironment and biomarkers, clinical oral and maxillofacial pathology, and dental education. He was awarded the first IADR/Unilever-Hatton Divisional Award in 2013 in Seattle, USA for his work on biomarkers in odontogenic keratocysts. He was also awarded a doctoral Scholarship from the University of Otago in 2013, a Fuller research scholarship from the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Otago in 2014, and two research grants from the New Zealand Dental Association Research Foundation in 2015 and 2016. His doctoral research was awarded the best oral presentation prize in Sir John Walsh Research Institute Research Symposium at the University of Otago in 2016. He previously served as the Chair of the School of Dentistry & Health Sciences’ Research Development Committee at Charles Sturt University and is the recipient of a number of research grants from the same university.