What status for science in Swiss politics?
With special guests : Kurt Wüthrich, Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2002, Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at ETHZ - Suzanne Suter, President of the Swiss Science and Technology Council - Patrick Aebischer, President of EPFL.
The Centre for Area and Cultural Studies (CACS) of the College of Humanities has launched last Fall the crash course "Switzerland, a very short introduction", specifically aimed at introducing our foreign guests on campus to the mysteries of their host country. This week it closes its series on “Policies” with the one we are all directly confronted with in our daily business: science. What is the status of science in Swiss politics?
Thursday, March 24, 2011 - 17.15 to 19.00h - Auditorium CO2 - EPFL
Does science get the necessary support, financially and with regard to science-friendly legislation? And is the money well spent? How does the Swiss science community perform in the international context? And what will the future bring? Are our universities well prepared for the likely new challenges in the extremely competitive environment of knowledge production?
It’s hard to imagine a panel that is more highly qualified to come up with the answers to these questions than the one you will meet on Thursday.
Susanne SUTER is President of the Swiss Science and Technology Council, the body in charge of advising the Swiss Government on R+D issues that are on, or will likely make it onto, the political agenda. She was, for many years, Director of the Paediatrics Department of the Geneva University Hospital and Geneva University’s School of Medicine.
Kurt WÜTHRICH is Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at the ETHZ and, at the same time, runs a lab at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California. He won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 2002 for his development of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy aimed at determining the three-dimensional structure of biological macromolecules. But Kurt Wüthrich is a man of many talents and I recommend you check his exciting autobiography on the official Nobel Prize web site.
Patrick AEBISCHER teaches neuroscience at EPFL and, of course, is President of Switzerland’s most dynamic and exciting university today … (home of the next Swiss Nobel Laureate .…).