Keynote Speaker

Marco Metzger is a Principal Investigator at the Fraunhofer Translational Center Regenerative Therapies TLC-RT in Würzburg, Germany.
He received his PhD from the Institute of Anatomy at the University of Tübingen, Germany, in the field of Tissue Engineering, where he worked on stem cell biology issues and the regeneration of the intestinal nervous system. As a post-doctoral fellow of the Leopoldina Foundation, he continued his research in this field at the renowned Great Ormond Street Hospital, Institute of Child Health in London, UK in the research group of Alan Burns and Nikhil Thapar. Afterward, he led a BMBF-funded junior research group at the Translational Center for Regenerative Medicine at the University of Leipzig, Germany, and then moved to the Fraunhofer Society in Würzburg, Germany, in 2011, where he focused on the construction of gastrointestinal tissue models and organoids. In 2018, he habilitated in the field of “Regenerative Medicine” at the University of Würzburg. Most recently, he led the Fraunhofer Translational Center for Regenerative Therapies, with about 50 employees and 4 research groups. In 2022, he and his team received the DFG’s highest endowed animal welfare award, the Ursula M. Händel Prize, for their work in the field of alternative methods to animal experimentation. In the same year, he co-founded the WI3R, the Würzburg 3R-Initiative, a new Bavarian 3R-Center focusing on the replacement of animal experiments.

Ulf Tölch is a research group leader at the BIH QUEST Center for Responsible Research @ Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. He holds a PhD in biology and studied decision-making strategies in the social context of humans during his postdoctoral work in Utrecht and Berlin. In 2017, he joined the QUEST Center to work on meta-scientific approaches to improve preclinical evidence. In this context, he focuses in particular on strategies to improve the validity and reliability of experimental approaches both in vivo and in vitro. He leads the working group “Systemic Perspectives in Translational Biomedicine.” In addition to his research, he also develops educational formats to promote responsible science and reproducible research. He is co-organizer of the “Berlin|Oxford Summer School on Responsible Research” and co-chair of the “German Reproducibility Network“.

Petra Seebeck studied Veterinary Medicine at the FU Berlin and holds a specialist degree in laboratory animal science (Berlin, Germany). She is a Diplomate of the European College of Laboratory Animal Medicine (ECLAM) and ECLAM’s current president-elect.

Ihre Postdoc-Forschung am Zentrum für Muskuloskelettale Chirurgie der Charité, Universitätsmedizin Berlin, konzentrierte sich auf Knochen, Knorpel und Frakturheilung, mit besonderem Interesse am Einsatz nicht-invasiver Techniken wie Ganganalyse und Serummarker zur Vorhersage des Verlaufs der Frakturheilung.

Seit 2010 leitet sie an der Universität Zürich eine Core Facility für Nagetiere, die Infrastruktur und Dienstleistungen für die experimentelle Forschung mit Nagetieren anbietet, einschließlich präklinischer Bildgebung, Radiotelemetrie und chirurgischer Dienstleistungen. Darüber hinaus bietet sie fachliche Beratung sowie Lehre und Ausbildung für Forschende an, die mit Labornagern arbeiten. Ihre derzeitigen Forschungsaktivitäten konzentrieren sich auf die Verfeinerung experimenteller Verfahren an Nagetieren. Das Projekt “Rodents have a right for best surgical practice” wird vom Schweizer Kompetenzzentrum 3R unterstützt.