Ellen Fritsche, MD, is the Director of the Swiss Centre for Applied Human Toxicology (SCAHT) in Basel, Switzerland. For the last >10 years she was a full University Professor at the Heinrich-Heine-University in Düsseldorf, Germany and working group leader of the group ‘Alternative method development for environmental toxicity testing’ at the IUF – Leibniz Research Institute for Environmental Medicine. She is a medical doctor by training and habilitated 2008 in environmental toxicology.

She has more than 30 years of experience in toxicological sciences including mechanistic studies and more than 20 years of experience in the development of new approach methods in vitro focusing on developmental and adult neurotoxicity and endocrine disruption. She coordinated the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA)-developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) project for application of a DNT in vitro battery for regulatory purposes. She participates in the European projects PARC, ONTOX (ASPIS cluster) and CHIASMA, the EFSA projects Brain Health and DNT RAP, and was part of the ENDpoiNTs project (EURION cluster). She is a member of the German MAK commission (Health Hazards of Chemical Compounds in the Work Area) and the DNT in vitro and Guidance Document 34 OECD Expert Groups. She was a member of the Human Health Working Group for the European Roadmap towards phasing out animal testing for chemical safety assessment.

She authored more than 200 publications in international peer-reviewed journals (h-index in Research Gate: 50), scientific opinions and book chapters. She is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Frontiers in Neurotoxicology. Recently, she founded the start-up company DNTOX – providing in vitro assay services for neurotoxicity safety assessment.