Renowned scientists from around the world can be invited to Berlin for short-term stays to foster in-depth scientific exchange and international collaborations in the field of 3Rs.
Interested project groups from EC3R can initiate the invitation of an international expert whose expertise will complement and advance excellent 3R research in Berlin. Part of the stay is also a lecture with discussions and individual meetings for the scientific community. The EC3R Steering Committee decides on the respective funding at its regular meetings.
Prof. Dr. Stina Oredsson is a researcher at Lund University Cancer Center and professor emeritus of sensory biology. She has received numerous awards for her contributions to research and teaching, including the Nordiska Forskningspriset (2012) and the Animal Friend of Skåne Award (2023). One of her outstanding achievements is the development of an animal-free, defined, and universal cell culture medium for the 2D and 3D cultivation of normal cells and cancer cells.
As part of the EC3R Lectures, she gave an inspiring talk on October 9, 2025, on the topic of “Human cell culture in 2025 and beyond: advancing with human-relevant, fully disclosed media.”
Prof. Dr. Daniel Chen, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, was a guest at the Kurreck Lab in June 2025.
Dr. Daniel Chen is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Division of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan (USask), Canada. He leads the Tissue Engineering Research Group (TERG) to develop scaffold-guided tissue engineering for treating tissue/organ injuries and combating infectious diseases. Dr. Chen is a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE) – Canada’s premier academy in engineering. He is also a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), and Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering (CSME). He has received the USask Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award.
As part of the EC3R Lectures, he gave an inspiring lecture on “Bioinks and Extrusion Bioprinting Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering” on June 3, 2025.
![[Translate to English:] Michael Außerlechner, Jens Kurreck](/fileadmin/_processed_/3/8/csm_ausserlechner_kurreck_35294f0582.jpg)
Visiting Experts Prof. Dr. Michael J. Außerlechner is Professor of Tissue Engineering at the Medical University of Innsbruck and winner of the Austrian Prize for the Promotion of Alternative Methods to Animal Experiments 2022/State Prize for the Promotion of Alternative Methods to Animal Experiments 2022.
He is an expert in 3D-printed tissue, especially cancer models. Among other things, he established the 3D bioprinting laboratory at the University Hospital of the Medical University of Innsbruck. Among his most important contributions is his work on a bioprinted, vascularized 3D neuroblastoma model.
Michael Außerlechner was a guest of Kurreck Lab and gave a talk titled "3D bioprinted tissue equivalents to study tumor - microenvironment interaction" on June 21, 2023.
Dr. Paul Holloway (University of Oxford, England) visited the EC3R for two weeks in October 2022. This was preceded by the positive review of the application submitted by PD Dr. Philipp Mergenthaler, Dr. Harald Stachelscheid and Prof. Dr. Andreas Meisel from the project "Modelling cross-body organ dysfunction using human brain organoids to investigate neurodegenerative diseases". The visit was titled "Organ-on-a-chip model of the blood-brain barrier." During this visit, Dr. Holloway shared his knowledge, as well as techniques and tools on the organ-on-a-chip model of the glio-vascular unit (GVU), which mimics the blood-brain barrier (BBB). This model will be established in the Mergenthaler Lab. In addition, the visit increased the expertise of this EC3R project in perfusing their organoids.
The two EC3R Juniors of this project, Sarah Schmerbeck and Lina Hellwig, both PhD students in working group Mergenthaler, were highly involved in this visit. Dr. Holloway's visit allowed them to learn novel and cutting-edge organ-on-a-chip methods, complementing their stroke research.
In addition, Dr. Holloway gave a public lecture at the EC3R on microfluidic systems and specifically on the GVU/BBB model. The newly aquired knowledge by Dr. Mergenthaler's group via the EC3R guest expert will also be shared within the EC3R community, e.g., through future lab visits.
