My main interest is the interaction of environment with animal (fish) physiology. Environmental factors of interest include chemical contaminants, naturally excreted compounds such as steroids and pheromones, temperature and photoperiod changes, housing, enrichment etc. My expertise is particularly strong in fish physiology and endocrinology, so it is not surprising that for the past 25 years, I have been conducting research on the impact of endocrine disrupting chemicals in the environment. My work is directed at advising UK government bodies, expert committees and international organisations whilst my research contributed directly to the development of OECD test guidelines for assessing chemical hazards and more recently the development of NAMs (New Approach Methodologies).

I am a behavioural biologist and welfare scientist specialising in the integration of behaviour, physiology, cognition and molecular biology to develop science-based frameworks for animal welfare assessment and monitoring in aquatic research and production systems.

My research is based on the development and harmonisation of operational welfare indicators; Early detection and monitoring tools for welfare assessment; Risk-based approaches linking behaviour, physiology, and health; Integration of welfare into sustainable and resilient food Systems; Cross-sector collaboration between research, industry and regulators.

Core areas of expertise include: Stress coping styles and resilience phenotypes; Positive Animal Welfare (PAW) frameworks; Behavioural thermoregulation and emotional responses; Precision Livestock Farming and AI-based behavioural monitoring; Environmental stressors in intensive and offshore systems

Stephen C. Ekker, PhD, is Professor of Pediatrics and Molecular Biosciences at The University of Texas at Austin, where he serves as Director of the Dell Pediatric Research Institute, Director of the Center for Rare Disease, and Associate Dean of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Dell Medical School. He is a genome engineer and zebrafish biologist whose work has helped establish zebrafish as a vertebrate system for functional genomics, disease modeling, genome engineering, and translational biology.

Dr. Ekker’s laboratory has contributed widely used zebrafish methods and resources, including morpholino functional genomics and morpholino-use standards, transposon-based gene discovery, protein-trap and gene-breaking vector systems, more than 1000 molecularly characterized revertible mutant zebrafish lines, TALEN/CRISPR editing, GeneWeld and DonorGuide targeted integration, and zebrafish-first approaches to mitochondrial disease modeling and mitochondrial-genome editing.

His current and historical NIH support follows the same resource-building trajectory. His long-running NIGMS award R01GM063904, Systematic Vertebrate Functional Genomics, began in 2001 and continues at UT Austin through 2027. 

Dr. Ekker is also co-founder and CEO of UViiVE, an agentic-first generative biology company using persistent AI scientist agents with shared memory, tool access, cross-agent communication, and human-held release gates. 

Dr. Freek van Eeden is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Biosciences at the University of Sheffield. With over thirty years of expertise in developmental biology and genetics, his research specializes in utilizing zebrafish as a powerful genetic model system to explore vertebrate development, aging, and the molecular mechanisms underlying human disease. Dr. van Eeden completed his doctoral research at the Max Planck Institute under the mentorship of Nobel Laureate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, and was involved in several large scale genetics projects using this model. Through this, he has gathered a lot of experience in many aspects of fish husbandry and welfare. Currently, his laboratory focuses on disease modeling, genome stability, and HIF signaling, integrating advanced tools like CRISPR-Cas9 and genome editing to dissect complex biological processes. Alongside his research and teaching, he actively contributes to institutional biosafety and animal welfare committees.