Heidi Mertes

Heidi Mertes
Heidi Mertes currently holds a position as a professor in ethics at Ghent University and is a postdoctoral research fellow of the Research Foundation – Flanders. She is also a founding member of the Bioethics Institute Ghent. She obtained her PhD in 2009 with a doctoral thesis on the interaction between science and ethics in the debate regarding embryonic stem cell research under supervision of Prof. Dr. Guido Pennings. Research interests since then include the ethics of reproductive medicine in general and more specifically ethical challenges in fertility preservation and prenatal genomics and ethical issues related to social egg freezing, stem cell derived gametes, genetic parenthood, genome editing, etc. She has published numerous articles in outstanding journals both in the fields of bioethics and of reproductive medicine and her results are also regularly presented at international conferences and symposia. Next to her research, she teaches courses in bioethics, engineering ethics and ethical theory to aspiring scientists and philosophers.