Advisory Board
The MERLN institute is dedicated to advancing research across a range of disciplines, including biomaterials, biofabrication, micro- and nanofabrication, cell biology, and in silico approaches for regenerative medicine. To help guide our efforts and ensure that we are operating in a sustainable and strategic manner, we have established an International Scientific Advisory Board (ISAB). The ISAB is composed of five independent advisors who provide expertise in areas such as scientific development and technical guidance, as well as strategic planning and industry partnerships. With input from the ISAB, we aim to continue building upon MERLN's core strengths of technology-based research, translation to the clinic, and collaboration with industry partners. The ISAB ensures that the strategic vision of MERLN is reviewed on an annual basis with appropriate international input and benchmarking.
Simone Arizzi
Simone Arizzi is the Managing Director of Arizzi Technology & Innovation Consulting GmbH. His Company, located in Zug, provides specialized consulting services worldwide on sustainability and innovation management topics to technology driven firms. Until 2020 he was regional CTO for DuPont for EMEA and Asia Pacific. Then based in Geneva, he was also the Managing Director of DuPont in Switzerland and President of DuPont Italiana. Previously in his career he held a variety of technology and business management positions in DuPont in the US and Europe. He holds a chemical engineering degree from the ETH in Zürich, and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from MIT.

John Jansen
John Jansen studied dentistry at the Catholic University in Nijmegen. From 1977-1990 he had a general dental practice in Maassluis and was employed as assistant professor by the Department of Biomaterials from the Free University Amsterdam resp. University Leiden. In 1991, he became associate professor at the department of Biomaterials at the Catholoc University Nijmegen. In 1996, he was appointed as full professor Biomaterials and Experimental Implantology. Since 2001 experimental periodontology was also added to his professorship. From 2005-2015, Jansen was Head of the Department of Dentistry. He retired in 2019.John Jansen published more than 700 publications in international journals and was promotor of 90 PhD theses. He is the inventor of 8 patents and is Co-editor-in-Chief of the Journal Tissue Engineering Part C.

Peter Johnson
Peter Johnson is Co-Principal of MedsurgPI and President and CEO of Scintellix. He is a University of Notre Dame and SUNY Upstate Medical University graduate. After General and Plastic Surgery training, Johnson practiced reconstructive surgery for ten years at the University of Pittsburgh where he founded and was the first President of the Pittsburgh Tissue Engineering Initiative. Subsequent roles were co-founder/CEO of Tissue Informatics, EVP of Life Sciences, CMO and CBO of Icoria, EVP, Entegrion, Inc. and VP, Research and Development and Medical and Scientific Affairs of Vancive Medical Technologies, an Avery Dennison business. He was recently acting CEO of Beacon Biotherapeutics, President and CEO of Cell X Technologies and served on the Industrial Technology Advisory Board of the Michigan-Pittsburgh-Wyss Regenerative Medicine Resource Center. He has Chaired the Plastic Surgery Research Council, was President of the Pennsylvania Biotechnology Association and the Tissue Engineering Society, International and sits on the Industrial Advisory Board of the UNC/NC State Joint Program in Bioengineering, the Board of the North Carolina Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Society, the Board of the Siegel Rare Neuroimmune Association, the Board of Plakous Therapeutics, Inc., the Board of Opsepio Therapeutics, Inc., is Chief Medical Officer of Microcures, Inc., Medical Business Advisor of Praetego, Inc. and is Chairman of the Board of Cell X Technologies. He is an Adjunct Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, of Biomedical Engineering at NC State University and Duke University and of Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University School of Medicine.

Christine Radtke
Christine Radtke studied medicine at the Hannover Medical School and undertook several stays abroad at the Yale University and Harvard University in the USA as she became a specialist in plastic, aesthetic and reconstructive and hand/upper limb surgery. She received an MBA in Healthcare Management, habilitation at the Hannover Medical School; and from 2012-2016 was Chief Senior Physician and Deputy Director of Plastic-Aesthetic, Hand and Reconstructive Surgery with the Severe Burns Center at the Hannover Medical School. Since 2015, Professor Radtke has been the President of the European Plastic Surgery Research Council and since October 1, 2016 Full Professor and Head of the Clinical Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery of the Medical University of Vienna. She has a strong clinical focus with many years of experience in aesthetic and reconstructive facial surgery as well as soft tissue reconstruction in all areas of the body. Her research focuses particularly on nerve regeneration.

Katja Schenke-Layland
Katja Schenke-Layland is the Professor of Medical Technologies and Regenerative Medicine at the Medical Faculty of the University Tübingen. She is the Director of the NMI Natural and Medical Sciences Institute in Reutlingen, the CEO of the NMI-TT GmbH, and Study Dean of Medical Technologies at the University of Tübingen. She has published more than 190 peer-reviewed articles, has an h-index of 50Scopus and has been granted 4 patents. Katja graduated in 2004 in the area of heart valve tissue engineering and non-invasive imaging under the supervision of Dr. Ulrich A. Stock at the University of Jena, Germany. Another field of interest was how tissue processing (e.g. cryopreservation) impacts extracellular matrix (ECM) structures and cells. She helped pioneer the use of multiphoton laser-based confocal microscopy and second harmonic generation as non-invasive tissue imaging tools. For her post-doctoral work, she joined 2005 the Dr. Robb MacLellan lab at UCLA with a focused on cardiac stem cell biology. Here, her seminal work was to be the first scientist to demonstrate that induced-pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) differentiate towards the cardiovascular and hematopoietic lineages, showing that beating cardiomyocytes could be derived from iPSCs. She then returned 2010 to Germany to join the Fraunhofer IGB in Stuttgart, Germany as a group leader, which was then followed by her appointment as Professor at the MFT and promotion to Department Head and later Director of the Fraunhofer IGB. She remained focused on cardiovascular tissue engineering and move into the areas of in vitro test systems and Raman microspectroscopy, with a focus on ECM proteins. Currently, her research lab at the MFT focuses on the translation of human development into clinically relevant biomaterials and regenerative therapies, and the development of diagnostic tools to assess (stem) cell states and fates, discover therapeutic candidates and diagnose diseases. She leverages her appointments to bridge the gaps between science and industry to drive viable health care solutions, particularly at the NMI, where they focus on supporting local Star-Ups and SMEs.
