On 11 January 2012, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) got together with 250 participants from science, higher education institutions and politics to discuss the forward-looking topic "What more can we do to support young researchers?". Different workshops were held in which young researchers were able to formulate their needs. The subsequent committed and constructive discussions with decision makers were crowned by the first appearance of federal councillor Alain Berset at a public event. The event was organized in celebration of the 60th anniversary of the SNSF.
The recording of the presentations for the press conference on the conclusion of NRP 56 “Language Diversity and Linguistic Competence in Switzerland“ can be found here (duration: 32 minutes).
Geologist uncovers mysteries behind formation of Alps.
Klaus Scherer, Professor of Psychology at Geneva University, is a leading researcher in the field of human emotions. His programmes evaluate emotion eliciting events and facial and vocal emotional expression.
Brigitte Studer is a History Professor at Bern University, and works in the fields of gender history, citizenship, the construction of collective identities, and social history.
Martin Schwab belongs to the international elite of neuroscientists. His great achievement was to discover a growth blocking protein called (Nogo) in the nerve fibres of the spinal cords and brains of paraplegics.
Professor Martine Rahier recently became the rector of Neuchâtel University, the first woman in western Switzerland to hold such a position. The Belgian born professor's research into the behaviour of the leaf beetle has won her international recognition.
Alumit Ishai is an Assistant Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at Zurich University. The Israeli-born neurobiologist investigates the neural mechanisms of visual perception.
The Anthropological Institute at Zurich University has re-established itself as a leading centre for primate research, thanks to the work of its director, Carel van Schaik.
Bernard Hirschel is head of the HIV/Aids Unit of the University Hospitals of Geneva. His reorganization of the Swiss HIV Cohort Study, a follow-up of more than 14,000 patients, created a database that is acclaimed worldwide for the information it can supply for assessing HIV/Aids treatments.
Award winning researcher, Susan Gasser, is director of the world-renowned Friedrich Miescher Institute in Basel and Professor of Molecular Biology at the city's university.
Ulrike Lohmann is one of the world's leading climate researchers. She was a principle author of the Nobel Prize winning IPCC Climate Report , which outlined the devastating effects of global warming on the planet.
The Institute for Biomedical Research (IRB) in the southern Swiss town of Bellinzona has produced antibodies that could protect against bird flu, SARS and malaria.
German researcher Michael Grätzel is well-known for inventing a new class of low cost solar cell at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.
Ernst Fehr, Director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at Zurich University, has made a name for himself in the expanding field of experimental economics, finding out how societies work.
In 1995, two Swiss astrophysicists at Geneva University made a discovery that was to revolutionise modern astronomy. Michel Mayor, Professor of Astrophysics, and doctoral student Didier Queloz, observed the first planet outside our solar system, revolving around a star 42 light years away from earth.
Professor Othmar Keel from Fribourg is one of the leading scholars of Ancient Near Eastern art and its relationship to the Bible.
Carlo Catapano is an expert in experimental therapeutics and his work at the Oncological Institute in Bellinzona, southern Switzerland, could offer new hope to cancer patients around the world.
The Swiss are world leaders in measuring time, and that's largely thanks to the work of Professor Pierre Thomann and his team at the Time-Frequency Laboratory of Neuchâtel University.
Sociologist Manuel Eisner studies what makes youths turn violent.
Denis Duboule is a world-renowned specialist in developmental genetics. He was one of the first to take an interest in Hox or Architect genes, revealing their essential role in limb formation.
Professor Rolf Pfeifer's robot experiments have made Zurich a world centre for artificial intelligence.
For two decades, biologist Laurent Keller has been researching ant behaviour. By studying the queen ant, which lives for an astounding 30 years, scientists in Keller's team at the University of Lausanne can draw valuable conclusions about how humans can also lead long and healthy lives.
Swiss climatologist Thomas Stocker has one of the world's most prestigious scientific jobs, co-chairing a working group of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, winner of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Stocker also heads the climate and environmental physics department at Bern University, a world leader in research into greenhouse gases. His team measures concentrations of the gas trapped in ice cores in Antarctica.
Felicitas Pauss's job is to find out what holds the world together. She's a professor at the Federal Institute for Technology in Zürich, and a project leader at Cern, the world's largest particle physics research laboratory on the French/Swiss border. She's leading an experiment using the Large Hadron Collider, to recreate the Big Bang on a small scale, and to find out how matter gains mass.