Prof. Dr. Hanno Würbel

I graduated in Biology at the University of Bern (Switzerland) in 1990 and obtained a doctoral degree (Dr. sc. nat.) at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich (Switzerland) in 1996. I continued research as a postdoc at Bristol University (UK), ETH Zürich, and University of Zürich, before being appointed Professor of Animal Welfare and Ethology at the University of Giessen (Germany) in 2002. In 2011, I returned to the University of Bern to take up the new chair for Animal Welfare. My main research line focuses on environment-dependent plasticity of brain and behavior, with regards to the welfare of captive animals and the scientific validity of animal research. Some of our findings have helped to shape the minimal requirements for the housing of laboratory rodents and influenced the authorization procedure for animal experiments. For my 3R research on refinement and reduction, I have obtained several research awards (e.g. Felix Wankel Animal Welfare Research Award 2009, ISAE Creativity Award 2015, CAAT Excellence in Refinement Award 2017, SGV 3R Award 2019). As director of the Division of Animal Welfare, I am also involved in research devoted to assessing and improving the health and wellbeing of farm animals and companion animals, primarily poultry, rabbits, dogs, and horses. Besides teaching and research, I am actively engaged in various committees to promote ethically responsible and scientifically valid research, e.g. as coauthor of the ARRIVE 2.0 Guidelines and the US Guide for the Care and Use of Laboratory Animals, as chair of the Ethics Committee for Animal Experimentation (ECAE) of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, as a member of the Executive Board of the Swiss 3R Competence Centre, and as a founding member of the Swiss Reproducibility Network.