Thomas Steckler, MD, is Associate Director, Bioresearch Quality & Compliance, Preclinical Quality Risk Management and global Bioresearch Quality & Compliance Lead Animal Welfare, Janssen Pharmaceutica NV, Belgium.

He studied Medicine at the Free University of Berlin, Germany and habilitated in Biological Psychology at the Heinrich-Heine University, Düsseldorf, Germany. Prior to joining the Bioresearch Quality & Compliance organization at Janssen he was a Senior Director in Neuroscience Drug Discovery at Janssen and a Senior Janssen Research Fellow for 15 years, a group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry, Munich, Germany, postdoctoral fellow at the MRC Neurochemical Pathology Unit, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and MD student at Schering, Berlin, Germany. Dr. Steckler is the project leader of the Enhancing Quality in Preclinical Data (EQIPD) Innovate Medicines Initiative (IMI), a co-lead of the ECNP Preclinical Data Quality Network consortium and serves as an AAALAC ad-hoc specialist.

He has co-authored more than 140 peer reviewed publications, has been a principal editor of the journal Psychopharmacology for several years, is co-editor of a number of books, and most recently co-edited a Handbook of Experimental Pharmacology on Good Research Practice in Non-Clinical Pharmacology and Biomedicine. He has a focus on the non-regulated Discovery space, with a passion for data integrity, research ethics and animal welfare.