Dr. Kurtz received his Diploma in Genetics from Martin-Luther University in Halle/Germany and his PhD in Cell Biology from the Academy of Sciences in Berlin, Germany. He worked as Assistant Professor at Georgetown and Harvard Universities before becoming Director of the German Stem Cell Authority in 2003. He is founding PI of the Berlin Center for Regenerative Therapies (BCRT) in Berlin and heads its Stem Cell Research Lab until now; from 2009 to 2016 he joined the faculty of Seoul National University to establish a teaching program in cell biotechnology. In 2020, he joined Fraunhofer IBMT to further data related research and application in the stem cell field. His research concerns stem cell therapy and stem cell database development. He coordinates the European Stem Cell Registry (https://hPSCreg.eu) since 2010. He is member of the European Group of Ethics in Science and New Technologies at the European Commission.