New professorships at the Faculty of Medicine and Faculty of Psychology

The University Council has appointed Professor Marc Aurel Busche as clinical professor of dementia in the Faculty of Medicine, working at the Felix Platter University Hospital for Geriatric Medicine. He will take up his position on 1 September 2025 and take over as head of department of the Memory Clinic and geriatric psychiatry.

The 41-year-old has been engaged as a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at University College London since 2018, where he looks after patients at the Memory Clinic at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery, Queen Square. He also leads a research group at the UK Dementia Research Institute that investigates the underlying mechanisms and causes of Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases in order to enable earlier diagnoses and develop new therapeutic approaches.

He completed his medical studies at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich and received his doctorate in medicine at the Technical University of Munich in 2011 with a thesis on the imaging of neural networks in the brain; in 2013, he received a PhD for an experimental thesis on the earliest cellular changes in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s. Since then, his clinical activities have focused on cognitive disorders, dementia and mental illnesses in old age.

After completing his habilitation in psychiatry and psychotherapy at the Technical University of Munich in 2017, he moved to the USA and worked as an EMBO fellow at the Massachusetts Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center at Harvard Medical School. His work has played a significant role in improving the understanding of molecular and cellular disorders in the early stages of neurodegenerative diseases.

Professor Heike Annette Bischoff-Ferrari will take over the clinical professorship in geriatrics in the Faculty of Medicine and head the Department of Geriatric Medicine at the Felix Platter University of Geriatric Medicine on 1 July 2025.

Following her doctorate and residency in geriatrics, rheumatology and orthopedics at the University of Basel, Professor Bischoff-Ferrari spent five years working at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. In Boston, she was a faculty member of Harvard Medical School from 2000 to 2005. In 2008, she obtained her doctorate from the Harvard School of Public Health with a thesis on public health, research methods and nutrition. In the same year, she completed her habilitation at the University of Zurich.

Professor Bischoff-Ferrari is a specialist physician in general internal medicine with a focus on geriatrics, as well as in physical medicine and rehabilitation. She founded the Center on Aging and Mobility in Zurich and was awarded the first chair of geriatrics and aging research at the University of Zurich in 2013. By 2023, she and her team had established the first university clinic for geriatric medicine at the University Hospital Zurich and Zurich-Waid City Hospital.

Her research focuses on the extension of healthy life expectancy and a comprehensive view of the health and function of older adults. Professor Bischoff-Ferrari leads the largest European study on healthy longevity funded by the EU: DO-HEALTH. Professor Bischoff-Ferrari will advance the development of geriatric medicine in Switzerland and her studies in healthy longevity at the University of Basel. 

From 1 January 2025, Professor Michael Hirschmann and Professor Andrej Nowakowski will take over the clinical professorship of orthopedics and biomechanics at the Faculty of Medicine under a shared professorship at the Cantonal Hospital of Baselland (KSBL). Both men are already heads of department at the Clinic of Orthopedics and Traumatology at the KSBL.

Professor Michael T. Hirschmann has been head of department at the clinic since 2021 and has been in charge of the musculoskeletal system center at KSBL since 2023. Since 2013, he has been head of knee surgery and has developed the field with a focus on knee arthroplasty, robotics and the diagnosis and treatment of painful knee prostheses. His academic career includes an habilitation and adjunct professorship in orthopedics and traumatology at the University of Basel. He has received numerous national and international honors for his research and is well-known for his work in the field of personalized medicine in knee arthroplasty.

Professor Andrej M. Nowakowski has been the head of the musculoskeletal system center at the Cantonal Hospital of Baselland (KSBL) since 2023, where he has also been medical head and head of department of orthopedics and traumatology since 2021.

His medical career includes positions as head of department in Uster and senior physician at the University Hospital of Basel. He has international experience and extensive expertise in infection and tumor orthopedics as well as revision arthroplasty.

His academic achievements include a PhD in biomedical engineering and a habilitation at the University of Basel, and he holds an adjunct professorship in orthopedics and traumatology at the University of Basel. His research focuses on the development of innovative medical implants, particularly in knee and hip prosthetics.

Professor Lara Wolfers will take up the assistant professorship (with tenure track) for digital lives in the Faculty of Psychology on 1 April 2025. The 34-year-old media psychologist and communication scientist deals with the use of digital media and its impact on society. Her professorship focuses on the psychological aspects of digitalization, in particular how people perceive digitalization, how they deal with the increasing digitalization of processes and how digitalization can be shaped to meet people’s needs.

Lara Wolfers has been an assistant professor at the Amsterdam School of Communication Research since 2021 and was appointed to a permanent position there in 2022. She earned her doctorate at the University of Hohenheim in 2021 for her thesis on the use of mobile media for stress management by caregivers. Prior to that, she obtained her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in communication science at the University of Hohenheim and Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz.

Wolfers has gained extensive teaching and research experience at such institutions as the Leibniz Institute for Knowledge Media in Tübingen and at the universities of Amsterdam, Hohenheim and Mannheim. Her research focuses on the intersection of communication science and psychology, in particular the impact of digital and social media on human well-being. Her central topics include smartphone use by parents, mechanisms for coping with stress using digital media, and the role of digital media in the family context.

Promotions at the Biozentrum

The University Council has promoted Professor Benjamin Engel to associate professor effective 1 February 2025. Benjamin Engel has been a tenure track assistant professor of structural biology and biophysics at the Department Biozentrum of the Faculty of Science since 2022.

In addition, the University Council has promoted Professor Richard Neher to full professor effective 1 February. Richard Neher has been associate professor for computational modeling of biological processes at the Department Biozentrum of the Faculty of Science since 2017.

Adjunct professorship

The University Council has also approved the decision by the Senate to appoint Dr. Henrik Gensicke to the adjunct professorship of neurology in the Faculty of Medicine.