![\"Gerhard](\"https:\/\/www.micropticsl.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/07\/Gerhard_blog.jpg\")
I am a passionate spermatologist who was fortunate to have worked and personally known the very best scientists\/mentors in the field since the age of 20,\u00a0 like Drs Polge, Thaddeus Mann, Hector Dott, Tim Glover (now almost 90) Elliasson, Bjorn Afzelius, Baccio Baccetti and many others. They have changed my life and I have never looked back.<\/p>\n
During all the years that you are working with CASA System you have seen a revolution in the field of Assisted Reproductive Technologies. Explain to us how do you start in this field and what evolution you\u2019ve observed.<\/strong><\/p>\n I was still at school when the first test tube baby, Louise Brown, was born. The Cambridge spermatologist Robert Edwards whom I have personally known professionally later on, received the Nobel prize for this work a few years ago. One of the challenges then and now is how to define good sperm quality\/functionality.<\/p>\n In the 1970\u2019s groups in the USA, England and South Africa (my lab) started with capturing video images of sperm and then replay it frame by frame and on transparencies constructed the tracks. This took forever but was objective and not subjective.<\/p>\n The next step influenced my career by working with Hector Dott in Cambridge in 1978 who had the first fully automated sperm motility analyzer built by Cambridge instruments and it filled half a room (only one built ever). Amazingly the well-known David Katz (Motion Analysis) as well as Diarmaid Douglas Hamilton (of Hamilton Thorne fame) also worked in Hector\u2019s lab for short periods and all three of us developed our own CASA systems in the late 1980\u2019s \/early 90\u2019s. My system was called SMQ (sperm motility quantifier) but was a DOS based system. So when Windows arrived in 1995 it was too costly for me to make it Windows friendly (very difficult those years). Many MSc and PhD students used it and we must have published about a dozen papers using this old workhorse up to 2007.<\/p>\n A new chapter then arrived which again influenced my career and life dramatically: I bought a SCA 3.1 CASA system from Microptic in 2007 and then became a consultant for them since 2008 due to great mutual understanding between me and Mr. Bellver of Microptic. In retrospect this up to now has been some of the most exciting times of my life. We formed almost naturally a great team and in particular I was so fortunate to work with brilliant bio-engineer, Eduard Sanchez of Microptic. We almost have an intuitive understanding of what is the next step. I was accordingly very fortunate to be involved in the development of the most advanced and top class CASA system in the world. But of course as a whole it was and is a Microptic team effort where we all support each other.<\/p>\n The developments of SCA over more than 16 years changed the concept of CASA totally by not only making it a system which is clinically usable and can be trusted but also that it\u00a0 was very early realized that more modules should be designed that helps define sperm functionality in\u00a0 both humans and animals. So yes I was fortunate to live this CASA revolution in ART since its very inception in 1970\u2019s.<\/p>\n How do you live your job?<\/strong><\/p>\n My work (95%) spermatology is my life, is my passion is almost everything to me. I am also extremely devoted to my research and when in Cape Town typically work seven days a week and for most days more than 12 hours per day. I still supervise five PhD and 2 MSc students. I also have a full CASA lab in my apartment overlooking the sea and Table Mountain and spend also many hours behind the microscope. I am a \u201clab rat\u201d and love to work next to my students.<\/p>\n