Professor Dean runs the RDS South Central’s Portsmouth site. After obtaining her PhD in King’s College, she commenced her research career in the Paediatric Allergy and Clinical Immunology Unit at the Royal Brompton and National Heart Hospital, London. While there, she was involved in a number of research projects in paediatric respiratory conditions such as asthma and cystic fibrosis. She then joined the University of Southampton Child Health Department as a Senior Research Fellow in 1991.

Tara has led research a number of research projects in the area of allergy and has published widely in leading medical and scientific journals and over the years has raised over £3,000,000 for her research.

She continues her research in the area of asthma and allergy and is the Honorary Deputy Director at the Asthma and Allergy Research Centre on the Isle of Wight whose activity in this area is internationally recognised. Currently she is Professor of Health Sciences and Associate Dean (Research) of University of Portsmouth Faculty of Science, as well as running the Portsmouth and Isle of Wight RDS SC site. She is a strong advocate of evidence based practice and has written number of articles on this area. She has been an external tutor on the internationally recognised multi-disciplinary Masters programme in Evidence Based Health Care run at the University of Oxford. In 2002 she led on the development of a Post Graduate certificate in Evidence Based Practice at University of Portsmouth and has been teaching on this course since its launch.