Prof. Saverio Braccini
Professor Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics (AEC), Laboratory for High Energy Physics (LHEP), University of BernCurrent research:
Medical and Detector Physics at University of BernSaverio Braccini is Professor of experimental physics at the Albert Einstein Center for Fundamental Physics (AEC) - Laboratory for High Energy Physics (LHEP) of the University of Bern, where he leads the research group on medical applications of particle physics. He proposed the realisation of the medical cyclotron laboratory at the Bern University Hospital, an innovative facility for radioisotope production and multi-disciplinary research. He teaches general physics, medical radiation physics and radiation protection. He was formerly Technical Director of the Foundation for Oncological Hadrontherapy TERA at CERN in Geneva, where he contributed to the development of innovative accelerators and detectors for the treatment of tumours with hadron beams. In fundamental high energy physics, he contributed to experiments at the Large Electron Positron Collider (LEP) and at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN.
Prof. Thomas Frölicher
Assistant Professor Climate and Environmental Physics, University of BernCurrent research:
Ocean modeling at University of Bern
Thomas Frölicher is currently a SNF Assistant professor at the Climate and Environmental Physics Division of the University of Bern and the head of the ocean modelling group. He is interested in marine ecosystem-carbon-climate interactions with focus on ocean extreme events and their impacts on marine organisms and ecosystem services. He studied environmental sciences at ETH Zürich and graduated in Physics at the University of Bern. He worked 2 ½ years as a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University and 4 years as a senior researcher at ETH Zürich. He is the recipient of the 2019 Theodor Kocher Prize of the University of Bern. He authored or co-authored 77 peer-reviewed publications, is the lead author of chapter six on Extremes, Abrupt Changes and Managing Risks of the IPCC Special Report on the Ocean and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate, and contributed to the fifth and sixth assessment report of working group I and II of the IPCC.
Prof. Andrew Jackson
Professor Institute for Geophysics, ETH ZürichCurrent research:
Earth and Planetary Magnetism at ETH Zürich
Andrew Jackson gained his Batchelor's degree in Natural Sciences at the University of Cambridge, majoring in Physics. He remained at Cambridge for his PhD, completed in collaboration with the British Geological Survey, Edinburgh. Jackson's first postdoctoral position was at Harvard University, from where, after two years, he returned to take up a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at Oxford University. Jackson subsequently moved to University of Leeds, where he became Lecturer, Reader and Professor of Mathematical Geophysics. Since January 2006, Jackson has been Professor of Geophysics at the ETH Zurich. He currently heads the Earth and Planetary Magnetism group within the ETH Institute for Geophysics.
Jackson's interests are primarily focussed in geomagnetism, particularly concerned with the mechanism by which planetary magnetic fields are sustained. He pursues this goal using a combination of data analysis, theory, computation and laboratory experiment.
Prof. Karsten Kruse
Professor Department of theoretical physics and biochemistry department, University of GenevaCurrent research:
Theoretical Biophysics at University of GenevaStudies of physics in Oldenburg, Germany, and Marseille, France; PhD with Theo Geisel in Frankfurt and Göttingen on quantum chaos in spatially extended systems; post-doc at the Institut Curie, Paris, France; guest scientist at the Landau Institute, Moscow, Russia; project and then group leader at the Max-Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, Dresden, Germany; Professor for Theoretical Physics at Saarland University; Saarbruecken, Germany; since 2016 Professor at the departments of Biochemistry and Theoretical Physics; University of Geneva, Switzerland.
Prof. Roderick Lim
Professor Biozentrum and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute, University of BaselCurrent research:
Nanobiology at University of Basel
Roderick Lim studied applied physics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the USA. He went on to use the atomic force microscope (AFM) to investigate the rheological properties of nanoscopic confined liquids at the National University of Singapore/Institute of Materials Research and Engineering, where he obtained his PhD in 2003. From 2004 to 2008, Rod was a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Ueli Aebi at the Maurice E. Müller Institute for Structural Biology, Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland. It was during this time that he pioneered the use of biomimetics and nanotechnology to reproduce the molecular functionality of a large cellular nanomachine known as the nuclear pore complex. For his work, Rod was awarded the 2008 Pierre-Gilles de Gennes Prize: From Solid State to Biophysics. In Jan 2009, Rod was appointed Argovia Professor for Nanobiology at the University of Basel where he received tenure in 2014. Currently, he holds a joint position at the Biozentrum and the Swiss Nanoscience Institute where he studies nucleocytoplasmic transport regulation and its impact on cellular function. He is also interested in mechanobiology, and in particular cancer progression. Lim is a co-inventor of ARTIDIS ("Automated and Reliable Tissue Diagnostics"), an AFM-based nanotechnology for cancer diagnosis.
Prof. Johan Robertsson
Professor Institute for Geophysics, ETH ZürichCurrent research:
Physics of waves propagation at ETH ZürichJohan Robertsson completed an MSc in engineering physics at Uppsala University, Sweden, in 1991, and continued his studies at Rice University, Houston, TX, USA, where he was awarded a PhD in Geophysics in 1994. He then moved to ETH Zurich to take up a position as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Geophysics from 1995 to 1996. In 1996 he joined Schlumberger where he spent 15 years in various R&D and management positions, including Research Director of Geophysics and Scientific Advisor at Schlumberger Gould Research, Cambridge. Part of his research led to Schlumberger’s largest R&D project ever, fundamentally changing the way marine seismic wavefields are sampled. Robertsson has been a Professor of Applied Geophysics and Head of the Exploration and Environmental Geophysics (EEG) Group at the Institute of Geophysics in the Department of Earth Sciences since 2012.
Robertsson’s main research interest is the physics of wave propagation in complex media, the modelling and inversion of seismic data, seismic data acquisition and processing for exploration and environmental geophysics applications.
Prof. Henning Stahlberg
Professor Laboratory of Biological Electron Microscopy, EPFLCurrent research:
Electron microscopy at EPFLHenning Stahlberg studied Physics at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany, and obtained his PhD from the EPF Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1997 in Structural Biology (Groups Prof. Horst Vogel and Prof. Jacques Dubochet). He then obtained his Habilitation in the group of Prof. Andreas Engel at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel in 2002, and accepted in 2003 a faculty position in Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California in Davis, CA, USA, where he established a laboratory for high-resolution structure determination of biological macromolecules by cryo-transmission electron microscopy. From 2009 to 2020, Stahlberg was Professor and director of the Center for Cellular Imaging and NanoAnalytics (C-CINA) at the University of Basel. Since 2020, he is Professor for Physics at the EPFL, where he is establishing the Dubochet Center for Imaging.
The Stahlberg group is focusing on Parkinson's disease and on membrane protein structures. The main method is cryo-electron microscopy, which is extended by multidisciplinary approaches, including use of neuronal cell cultures and human brain tissue, using expression and purification of relevant protein systems, and biophysical and structural investigations with a variety of tools.
The group is also developing methods to advance imaging capabilities in cryo-EM. For this, the team of Dr. Thomas Braun in the group has developed microfluidic technology to purify proteins out of nanoliters of sample, and to prepare cryo-electron microscopy grids from such quantities. The group is also developing novel imaging approaches in order to accelerate the structure determination of smaller proteins.
Prof. Paul Tackley
Professor Institute for Geophysics, ETH ZürichCurrent research:
Structure, dynamics and evolution of Earth at ETH ZürichPaul Tackley got his BA in Natural Sciences (Physics major) 1987 from the University of Cambridge, UK, (1st Class Honors). In 1991 he got his MSc in Geophysics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA and in 1993 a M.A. Natural Sciences (Physics major) from the University of Cambridge. He earned his PhD in Geophysics at Caltech in 1994. Following the doctorate, he worked at the University of California, Los Angeles: Assistant Professor 1994-99, Associate Professor 1999-2003, Full Professor 2003-2005. Paul Tackley has been Professor for Geophysical Fluid Dynamics at the ETH Institute of Geophysics, Department of Earth Sciences since 2005. From 2013-2016 he was the study director of the Department of Earth Sciences and served as Head of the Institute of Geophysics from 2010-2014.
Tackley’s group is presently involved in many different projects covering lithosphere dynamics, mantle dynamics, planetary dynamics, planetary differentiation and extra-solar planets, and the development of appropriate numerical techniques for these.