The MERLN Institute for Technology-Inspired Regenerative Medicine was founded in 2014 by Clemens van Blitterswijk, Pamela Habibovic, Jan de Boer, Roman Truckenmüller, and Lorenzo Moroni. Van Blitterswijk also headed the Complex Tissue Regeneration (CTR) department at that time. Together with the other two departments, namely Instructive Biomaterial Engineering (IBE), led by Prof. Pamela Habibovic and Cell Biology-Inspired Tissue Engineering (cBITE), led by Prof. Jan de Boer, MERLN quickly grew to become a successful institute performing cutting-edge science, establishing new interdisciplinary collaborations, and building up an excellent regional, national and international reputation.
Van Blitterswijk led the institute until December 2018, after which Pamela Habibovic became its new Scientific Director. At the same time, Prof. Lorenzo Moroni took over as head of the CTR department and began as the institute's Vice Director, while Jan de Boer moved to the Technical University Eindhoven. In September 2019, cBITE gained a new department head, when Prof. Martijn van Griensven was appointed. Van Blitterswijk still continues to serve as a principal investigator and scientific advisor to MERLN and joins our Business Development Officer, Prof. Marianne van der Steen, on MERLN's advisory team.
In February 2022, MERLN underwent another change when Pamela Habibovic was promoted to Rector of Maastricht University. Lorenzo Moroni subsequently took over as Scientific Director, while Martijn van Griensven became Vice Director.
The chart below depicts MERLN's current organizational structure which also shows the Principal Investigators, our Managing Director Dr. Sef Janssen, and the Management Team consisting of Lorenzo Moroni (scientific director), Clemens van Blitterswijk (advisor), Roman Truckenmüller (engineering portfolio), Sabine van Rijt (education portfolio), Paul Wieringa (infrastructure portfolio), Sef Janssen (financial portfolio), and Martijn van Griensven (clinical translation portfolio).