Prof. Dr. Ralf Smeets is the Vice Head of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery and the Head of the Division of 'Regenerative Orofacial Medicine” at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, Germany. His academic career started in Aachen at RWTH Aachen University, where he completed his chemical studies in 1995 and studied medicine until 2003. Besides his medical studies, he studied economics at the University of Hagen. He finished his residency as an oral and maxillofacial surgeon and oral surgeon in 2009. In 2011, he became a full W2 professor at the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf, and was a visiting professor at University Bremerhaven (Germany) until 2015. He has been working as the Head of the Division "Regenerative Orofacial Medicine" of the Department of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf.
Univ. Prof. Dr. Ewa Klara Stuermer, MD is the Surgical Head of the Comprehensive Wound Center (CWC) at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany. She graduated from the University Essen-Duisburg in 1996 and served as a General Surgeon, Trauma Surgeon, and Orthopedist from 2001 to 2011, and as a Head of the Experimental Lab from 2003 to 2011 at the University Medical Center Goettingen. She worked as a Professor of Translational Wound Research at Witten/Herdecke University from 2015 to 2020 and has been working as the Surgical Head of the CWC and Head of Translational Wound Research at the University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf since 2020. She is also a member of the EWMA council, of the German Society for Surgery, of the German Wound Council (Board), and of the Chronic Wounds Initiative (Advisory Board). Her current research interests include biofilm, antimicrobials, cold atmospheric plasma, blue light in wound healing, wound odour, wound fluits, skin microbiome, inflammation and infection (skin), probiotics, adult stem cells, in vitro and ex vivo 3D models, and physical measurements (pH, temperature, adhesion, absorption, etc.).
