The Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen (EKUT) is one of Europe’s oldest universities. With more than 280 courses on offer in the Sciences and Humanities, through seven faculties, some 28,500 German and international students and some 450 professors and more than 4000 other academic teaching staff, UT is an international teaching and research center of excellence. The Löwenheim laboratory is located at the University of Tübingen Medical Centre, Department of Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery.

The University of Bern (UNIBE) federates 8 faculties, some 160 institutes and 8 Graduate Schools. With 15'900 students, it is of mid-range size among Swiss universities. The Faculty of Medicine is engaged in research and teaching to promote and disseminate scientific knowledge in the field of healing and its foundations. UNIBE has a formal research collaboration with Inselspital (http://www.inselspital.ch), which is one of the leading Swiss University Hospitals with about 7000 collaborators and more than 220,000 patients annually. Dr. Pascal Senn’s group is working at the Univ. Dept. of Otorhinolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery, Inselspital and is working in close collaboration with the research group of Prof. S. Leib of the laboratory for experimental neuroinfectiology at the Institute for Infectious Diseases at UNIBE.

The University of Sheffield (UoS) is a word top-100 University reowned for the excellence, impact and distinctivenss of its research-led learning and teaching. In addition UoS is among the top ten in Russell Group, the association of leading UK research-intensive universities. The Rivolta laboratory is part of the Centre for Stem Cell Biology (CSCB), Department of Biomedical Sciences at the UoS. CSCB is recognized internationally as a Centre of Excellence for research on pluripotent stem cells, being the first laboratory to undertake research on human embryonic stem cells in the UK in 1999.

Stanford University is one of the world's leading teaching and research universities. Since its opening in 1891, Stanford has been dedicated to finding solutions to big challenges and to preparing students for leadership in a complex world. Stanford OHNS (Otolaryngology Head & Neck Surgery) research laboratories are at the forefront of innovative bioscience and technology. The cardinal goal of Stanford OHNS is to conduct research on issues relevant to human disease with a special emphasis on the goal of curing deafness through regenerative means. The Heller laboratory is part of the Otolaryngology research division that includes five additional groups focusing on auditory biology comprising molecular studies, biophysics, genetics/genomics, systems biology, and translational research. The laboratory is member of the Molecular & Cellular Physiology as well as Regenerative Medicine programs and fully integrated into the Stanford biomedical graduate programs.