Swiss science: current state and future challenges

What status does science have in Swiss politics? Are our universities ready and equipped to take up tomorrow’s challenges? And what methods should we use to promote science? Does current legislation create a favorable climate for research? All these questions will be addressed during this conference, which will close the series on sectorial politics within the framework of: “Switzerland, a very short introduction”.

It’s difficult to imagine three speakers more qualified to take part in this debate. Susanne Suter is President of the Swiss Council for Science and Technology. Kurt Wüthrich, chemist and Nobel Prize winner for chemistry, is head of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the ETH in Zurich. And Patrick Aebischer, President of EPFL and director of the Neurodegenerative Studies Laboratory, is confronted with these questions daily in promoting EPFL on the international scientific stage.

The objective of this series of conferences is to offer to foreign students at EPFL the opportunity to discover the various facets of Switzerland. Various themes are addressed: history; institutions and political life; the economy and entrepreneurship; sectorial politics and culture. The series is organized by the Centre for Area and Cultural Studies, the new center recently created within the College of Humanities, headed by Hans-Peter Hertig.

The conference, in English only, is open to the EPFL community. It will begin at 17:15 in Auditorium CO2.