Institute of Alpine Physiology
High-altitude human performance, hypoxia medicine and clinical trials conducted between the teaching hospital and the field station at 2,400 metres.
Research
Enquiry conducted in the open
Six institutes, thirty-one partnerships and a doctoral programme funded for four years as standard.
6
Research institutes
CHF 112m
Annual research funding
480
Doctoral candidates
2,400m
Highest field station
Institutes
Where the work is done
Each institute is directed by a professorial board and reports to the Vice-Rector for Research.
Centre for Comparative Law
Cross-jurisdictional research on private international law, arbitration and the law of cultural property, with a standing seminar in Geneva.
Laboratory for Applied Intelligence
Machine learning for scientific discovery, formal verification and the governance of autonomous systems.
Institute of Molecular Biotechnology
Protein engineering, biomanufacturing and translational work carried out with partners in the Rhône Valley's life-science corridor.
Centre for Cultural Memory
Archival scholarship on the valley, its languages and its manuscript collections, including the university's own holdings from 1786.
Observatory of Political Economy
Empirical work on institutions, inequality and cross-border governance, publishing an annual report on the European regions.
Doctoral study
Training the next generation
Doctoral candidates are admitted by the schools with the written endorsement of a supervisor and are ordinarily funded for four years, including a teaching component of no more than four hours weekly. Every candidate is assigned a second reader from outside their institute at the point of admission.
Undergraduate research
Early involvement
Second-year students may apply to the summer research programme, which places them in an institute for ten weeks with a stipend. Roughly one in five undergraduates co-authors a published paper before graduating.