Five new professors at the University of Basel

The University Council has elected Professor Nils Schaks as Professor of Public Law with a focus on life sciences law. He will begin his position in the Faculty of Law on 1 February 2024.

Schaks studied law at the University of Potsdam, the Université Paris X-Nanterre, and Humboldt University in Berlin before receiving his doctorate from the Freie Universität Berlin in 2007. He was named Junior Professor of Public Law at the University of Mannheim in 2015 and completed his habilitation in 2021 at the FU Berlin, where he was authorized to teach public law, including European law, social and health law, and comparative law. Until recently, he held a guest professorship in the Faculty of Law at University of Freiburg (Germany).

In addition to his academic positions, he also served as an attorney specializing in life sciences law for an international law firm and a global pharmaceutical company. Areas of law he looks forward to exploring in more depth in Basel include pharmaceutical, genetic engineering, reproductive medicine, and nursing law. He approaches these areas from an interdisciplinary perspective, taking technological advances into account.

Professor Matthias E. Liechti has been appointed Clinical Professor of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at the Faculty of Medicine. This position will begin on 1 July 2023. Liechti has been an attending physician in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology at the University Hospital Basel since 2010, and Assistant Director of the department since 2020. Along with his promotion to full professor, he will also be named head of the department.

After finishing his medical and doctoral studies at the University of Zurich, Liechti worked as a postdoc at the Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich and began research in the field of psychopharmacology. In parallel he pursued his clinical training, leading to his qualification as a specialist physician for general internal medicine (2004) and clinical pharmacology and toxicology (2010). From 2005 to 2007, he conducted psychopharmacological research at The Scripps Research Institute and University of California San Diego School of Medicine in the United States. He started his position in the Department of Clinical Pharmacology & Toxicology at the University Hospital Basel in 2008. He received the Venia docendi in 2009 and an honorary professorship in 2013 at the University of Basel.

Liechti’s research focuses on clinical pharmacology, pharmacokinetics, and the therapeutic use of psychoactive substances including psychedelics.

Professor Petya Apostolova has accepted the position of tenure-track Assistant Professor of Experimental Hematology in the Faculty of Medicine. She will take up her position on 1 November 2023, and in connection with the appointment as Assistant Professor, she will also become a senior physician at the Hematology Clinic at the University Hospital Basel.

Professor Apostolova studied medicine at the University of Freiburg (Germany) with electives in Vienna, Sofia, and Basel. After finishing her doctorate in 2013, she completed her specialist physician training in internal medicine at the Medical Center – University of Freiburg. From 2019 to 2021, she conducted research at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg. Since 2021, she has been a postdoctoral research fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in Baltimore (USA) with support from the German Research Foundation.

Her academic work examines questions of how hematological cancers can be cured using immunotherapy. She particularly focuses on exploring metabolic processes in tumor and immune cells that govern survival, cellular function and interactions between cells. By investigating these aspects of tumor biology, Apostolova aims to develop innovative concepts for cancer immunotherapies.

Professor Armando Meier was appointed tenure-track Assistant Professor of Health Economics at the Faculty of Business and Economics. He is currently a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Lausanne and Unisanté as well as Co-founder and Co-director of the Lausanne Center for Health Economics, Behavior and Policy.

His interdisciplinary research in health economics touches on labor economics, health policy, and behavioral science using large data sets and experiments. For example, his research has studied how to increase vaccination rates with various policy measures. His research has been published in the journals Nature and Science.

Armando Meier studied economics at the University of Basel, finishing his doctorate in 2018. Research stays took him to Columbia University, Stanford University and the University of Chicago (all in the USA) before he took his current position in Lausanne in 2020. Until taking up his post on 1 August 2024, he will continue his research as part of an Ambizione project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation and will complete planned research stays, including at Columbia University.

On the recommendation of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the President’s Office has named Dr. Isabelle Marthot-Santaniello Assistant Professor (non-tenure track). She has been associated with the Department of Ancient Civilizations since 2015 as a research associate and SNSF Ambizione Fellow.

Marthot-Santaniello completed her education in Classics at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and in Classical Studies at the École Pratique des Hautes Études (EPHE) in Paris. She obtained her PhD from EPHE in 2013 and conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Minnesota (USA).

Her research interests include computational paleography, the materiality of Ancient Greek literature, papyrology, and digital humanities. In November 2022, she received an SNSF Starting Grant for the period 2023–2028 to study the development of manuscripts in Greco-Roman Egypt. Marthot-Santaniello is developing tools for identifying and dating ancient manuscripts on papyrus as part of her digital paleography project. The Assistant Professor title has been awarded for the duration of the SNSF Starting Grant.

Professor Hugues Marchal, Associate Professor of French and General Literature in the Department of Languages and Literatures since 2016, will be promoted to Full Professor effective 1 August 2023.