Matthias Herzler is a scientific director and head of unit at the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR). In addition to his academic background in analytical chemistry and toxicology, he has more than 20 years of experience as a risk assessor under various European chemicals legislations (pesticides, biocides, REACH and CLP). Dr. Herzler’s scientific interests circle around the confidence in regulatory risk assessments and the uptake of New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) into regulatory practice. Over the past 20 years, he has been a member of numerous EU, OECD, WHO and UN expert groups in the field, in addition to providing regulatory advice to the EU Horizon 2020 projects EU-ToxRisk and RISK-HUNT3R. At present, Dr. Herzler and his unit are deeply engaged in transversal activities under the European Partnership for the assessment of risks from chemicals (PARC). They are also part of the consortium of the Horizon2020 project PANORAMIX.
OpenTox Summer School 2025
PARCopedia - building a community to innovate chemical risk assessment
PARCopedia (https://parcopedia.eu) is a knowledge management and community platform for everyone professionally involved or otherwise interested in chemical risk assessment (CRA). Created under the Partnership for the Assessment of Risks From Chemicals (PARC, https://eu-parc.eu), the main idea of PARCopedia is to build bridges and promote exchange between the various CRA subcommunities (such as academia, authorities, industry, NGOs or policy-makers) worldwide, whether part of PARC or not. By bridging knowledge and language gaps, PARCopedia hopes to foster the innovation of CRA and global collaboration towards "Next-Generation Risk Assessment" (NGRA). Participants will be introduced to the main features of the platform, such as the dashboard with news, events and job opportunities, the WIKI knowledge base, the social media component, which allows to set up personal and institutional profiles as well as public, private or hidden groups and discussion fora, or the resource pages providing links to useful databases, tools and trai9ning materials. This will be followed - as far as time allows - by a moderated discussion among the participants about their experiences in interacting with other CRA stakeholder groups, about possible barriers to such interactions and about their information needs and personal expectations towards a platform like PARCopedia.