Technische Universität Berlin - Department for Healthcare Management

Dr. Ruth Waitzberg is research fellow at the Department of Health Care Management at the Berlin University of Technology and the Berlin hub of the European Observatory on Health System since May 2020. She is also research scholar at the Smokler Center for Health Policy Research of the Myers-JDC-Brookdale Institute in Jerusalem, Israel since 2010. She holds a joint PhD in public health and health systems management from the Berlin University of Technology and at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.  Ruth has worked in collaboration with Israeli policymakers both brokering knowledge from the world to Israel and from Israel to the world. Ruth has won competitive grants for independent studies on healthcare policy and health economics. Her primary research areas are payment to health providers and financial incentives, health insurance, agency failure, policy evaluation, health and long-term care systems, and international comparisons.

Béatrice Durvy is a research fellow at the Technische Universität Berlin involved in projects with the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies. Previously, she completed a traineeship in International Affairs at the European Medicines Agency, focusing on international coordination and regulatory reliance mechanisms. Within Save the Children International, she conducted research for her Master’s thesis on NGO staff compliance with Quality Assurance policies for clinical and pharmaceutical care. Béatrice Durvy holds a Pharmacy degree from the University Paris-Saclay and an MSc in International Health Policy from the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Lukas Schöner is a research fellow and PhD candidate at the Department of Health Care Management of the Berlin University of Technology since 2020. Previously he has graduated with a Master's degree in Applied Economics with focus on behavioral and experimental health economics. He currently works on a large clinical trial to assess the cost-effectiveness of a post-surgery patient follow-up that employs patient-reported outcome measures (PROMs) to timely detect and react to critical recovery paths. In this context, his main research focus is on new approaches of outcome and quality measurement, quality of care transparency, health economic evaluations and value-based health care (VBHC) considerations.

Katharina Achstetter has been a research associate at the Department of Health Care Management at Technische Universität Berlin since October 2018. She previously studied Public Health (Master of Science) at the Berlin School of Public Health (BSPH), a collaboration between Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Alice Salomon Hochschule, and Technische Universität Berlin. She obtained her Bachelor of Science in Health Sciences at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin. Before that, she worked as a physiotherapist for several years.

Bandan Faraj has been a working student at Technische Universität Berlin since 2025. He is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Epidemiology at Charité University in Berlin, where he focuses on public health research and epidemiological methods. With a background in dentistry, Bandan previously worked as a dentist before transitioning into research. His research interests primarily include health economic evaluations, healthcare financing, and the integration of dentistry into broader public health strategies. He is involved in large-scale, multi-university research projects aimed at improving health systems and policies.