“There is no other country in the world that does as much to develop substitute methods for animal testing as Germany,” says Professor Horst Spielmann of the Institute of Pharmacy at Freie Universität Berlin. He should know. Spielmann spent 20 years as head of the Center for Documentation and Evaluation of Alternative Methods to Animal Experiments (Zentralstelle zur Erfassung und Bewertung von Ersatz- und Ergänzungsmethoden zum Tierversuch, ZEBET) at the German Federal Institute for Risk Assessment (BfR), an institution like no other in the world, dedicated to investigating methods that can be used to determine that pharmaceuticals, foods, and chemicals pose no threat to human health – without causing suffering to animal subjects.

At just 25, junior professor Lena Rudkowski is not much older than the students she teaches. She is the youngest junior professor at Freie Universität Berlin and the youngest junior professor in her subject – law – anywhere in Germany. “My experience has been very positive,” she says. “The department is especially supportive.” And Rudkowski is not alone: According to recent figures, November 2011 marks the first time that more women than men serve as junior professors at Freie Universität.