On 19 June, the Federal Council communicated further relaxation steps. The situation is now classified as "special" and no longer as "extraordinary". In an interview, President Andrea Schenker-Wicki explains how the University is preparing for the autumn semester and what challenges will have to be overcome in the coming months.
How can we protect communications against “eavesdropping” if we don’t trust the devices used in the process? This is one of the main questions in quantum cryptography research. Researchers at the University of Basel and ETH Zurich have succeeded in laying the theoretical groundwork for a communication protocol that guarantees one hundred percent privacy.
A survey conducted at the University of Basel and the Psychiatric Hospital of the University of Basel has investigated how sleep has changed during the Covid-19 lockdown. The 435 individuals surveyed – most of whom were women – reported sleeping longer while sleep quality deteriorated. The results of the study were published in the scientific journal Current Biology.
Professor Maria Hondele will be the new assistant professor for biochemistry at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. The University Council promoted Professor Nicola Gess for German studies, Professor Martino Poggio for Nanotechnology, Professor Rainer Greifeneder for social psychology, and Professor Sarah Lein for economy, all on 1 August 2020.
Economist Robert Stelter investigates the long-term interplay of economic and demographic trends. The President’s Board of the University of Basel has appointed him as the Faculty of Business and Economics’s new assistant professor of Quantitative Economic History (Cliometrics). The five-year professorship is financed by the Max Geldner Foundation.
In a year’s time, Professor Ivan Martin will take over the direction of the Department of Biomedicine (DBM) as the successor to Professor Radek Skoda. The DBM has grown and increased its academic strength under Skoda’s leadership. In an interview, Martin explains how he plans to ignite the second stage of propulsion.
Researchers have developed a strategy that has the potential to improve vision in patients with macular degeneration in the future. Using a gene therapy, they sensitized blind retinas of mice and human organ donors to near-infrared light. The team based at the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB) has published its results in the journal Science.
Atomically thin layers of the semimetal tungsten ditelluride conduct electricity losslessly along narrow, one-dimensional channels at the crystal edges. The material is therefore a second-order topological insulator. By obtaining experimental proof of this behavior, physicists from the University of Basel have expanded the pool of candidate materials for topological superconductivity. The findings have been published in the journal Nano Letters.
From itching, abdominal pain and exhaustion to unconsciousness: the drug midostaurin can help alleviate these symptoms and improve quality of life in patients with mastocytosis. This has been proven by a research group at the University of Basel.
