Sabine Süsstrunk elected President of the Swiss Science Council
Alain Herzog © 2020 EPFL
The Federal Council has elected Sabine Süsstrunk, Professor at the EPFL School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC), as President of the Swiss Science Council (SSC). Sabine Süsstrunk will succeed Gerd Folkers, who has been President of the SSC since 2016, as of January 1, 2021.
Sabine Süsstrunk studied scientific photography at ETH Zurich. After completing a Master's degree in electronic publishing at the Rochester Institute of Technology (USA), she worked for four years at Corbis Corp. (USA) as a principal imaging researcher in the Advanced Technology Group. From 1999 to 2014, she was first an assistant professor and then an adjunct professor at EPFL. She received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of East Anglia, Norwich (UK), in 2006. Since 2014, she is a full professor at EPFL's Image and Visual Representation Laboratory (IVRL). Since 2015, she is also Director of the Digital Humanities Institute of the EPFL College of Humanities (CdH).
Expert of the Swiss educational, research and innovation system within the international networks, Sabine is familiar with the promotional instruments and practices in these domains.
The SSC is an extra-parliamentary commission governed by the Law on the Promotion of Research and Innovation. The Federal Council elects its members and appoints its president. It advises the Federal Council on its own initiative or on behalf of the Federal Council or the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research on all matters relating to research and innovation policy. It currently consists of 15 members with recognised interdisciplinary expertise in science, education, and innovation.