Dr. Ali Maximilian Erturk is a neuroscientist, inventor, and artist based in Munich, Germany. Since July 2019, he has served as the director of the Helmholtz Institute for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine (iTERM) in Munich and holds a professorship at the medical faculty.

After completing his undergraduate studies at Bilkent University in Ankara, Dr. Erturk pursued his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology and conducted postdoctoral research at Genentech Inc. He is internationally recognized for developing DISCO (Depth Imaging of Solubilized Cleared Organs) tissue transparency technology and advancing deep learning-based analysis of large-scale 3D biomedical images. These methodologies collectively enable unprecedented visualization of cellular and molecular details in whole organs and organisms.

Dr. Erturk holds the position of W3 Professor at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (LMU) and maintains an affiliation with the University of Rochester. In 2022, he co-founded two biotechnology companies—Deep Piction and 1X1 Biotech—dedicated to developing innovative therapies for life-threatening diseases such as cancer, Alzheimer’s, and heart conditions.