Sabine Süsstrunk elected President of the Swiss Science Council
© 2020 EPFL / Alain Herzog
The Swiss Federal Council has elected Sabine Süsstrunk, a professor at EPFL’s School of Computer and Communication Sciences, to be the new president of the Swiss Science Council (SSC), effective 1 January 2021. She will succeed Gerd Folkers, who has served as the SSC’s president since 2016.
Süsstrunk earned a BS in scientific photography from ETH Zurich and a Master’s in electronic publishing from the University of Rochester in the United States. She then spent four years working as the principal imaging researcher at Corbis Corp. within the Advanced Technology Group USA. Between 1999 and 2014, she worked as an assistant professor and then adjunct professor at EPFL. She obtained a PhD in computer science from the School of Computing Sciences at University of East Anglia in Norwich, UK, in 2006. She has been a full professor at EPFL’s Image and Visual Representation Lab since 2014 and was named head of EPFL’s Digital Humanities Institute within the College of Humanities in 2015.
Süsstrunk is expert in the international dimensions of Switzerland’s education, research and innovation system and fully conversant with the associated practices and promotional mechanisms.
The SSC is an extra-parliamentary commission governed by the Swiss Federal Act on the Promotion of Research and Innovation. Its members are elected by the Federal Council, which also appoints its president. The SSC advises the Federal Council either on its own initiative or if commissioned by the Federal Council or the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research to study a specific policy issue related to research and innovation. The SSC currently has 15 members with recognized, cross-disciplinary skills in science, professional education and innovation.