Ard Nijhof, DVM, PhD, is Professor of Veterinary Parasitology at the Institute for Parasitology and Tropical Veterinary Medicine, Freie Universität Berlin, Germanya. He received his DVM (2004) and PhD (2010) from Utrecht University and became a German Board-certified Specialist in Veterinary Parasitology in 2017. His research focuses on ticks, tick-borne pathogens, and vector-host-pathogen interactions, with a particular emphasis on artificial tick feeding systems and in vitro transmission models. He has led several national and international research projects funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), the European Union, and other funding bodies. Ard Nijhof also serves as Editor-in-Chief of Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases and co-organizes the biennial International Symposium on Ticks and Tick-borne Diseases in Weimar, Germany.