Three new professorships and one promotion

Professor Ranjodh Singh Dhaliwal will take up the professorship in digital humanities with a focus on artificial intelligence on 1 September 2024. He is currently an assistant professor in the Department of English and the Department of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame (Indiana, USA), where he holds the Ruth and Paul Idzik Collegiate Chair in Digital Scholarship. He obtained his doctorate in English Language and Literature from the University of California in 2021, with an emphasis in Science and Technology Studies (STS).

Prior to that, he received a B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (Indore, India), and was a postgraduate student at the University of Chicago. His professional experience includes teaching at Notre Dame, several fellowships across the US and Germany, and extensive research in areas such as digital humanities, history of technology, science fiction studies, twentieth-century American literature, critical design, and game studies.

Dhaliwal’s research primarily focuses on the intersection of critical theory, literary studies, media theory, and science and technology studies, concentrating on the political and cultural implications of computation and digital technologies. In his forthcoming book "Rendering: A Political Anatomy of Computation", Dhaliwal examines the history of modern information technologies since the late 19th century in their socio-technical, aesthetic and economic dimensions, laying bare the interactions between ideological foundations and technical manifestations (software, hardware).

Professor Claudia Isabelle Keller Valsecchi will take up her position as assistant professor with tenure track for molecular biology at the Biozentrum on 1 August 2025. She is currently a research-group leader at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz. She received her doctorate in Biochemistry at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) in Basel, specializing in epigenetic gene regulation and chromatin. She also completed her Master of Science at the FMI, after completing her Bachelor of Science in Biology with a focus on molecular biology at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel.

After completing her doctorate, she worked as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, supported by a scholarship from the Human Frontier Science Program. She has headed a research group at the IMB in Mainz since May 2020. Her research focuses on sex chromosomes and gene dose changes.  Her team focuses on the molecular processes that ensure the “equality” of the maternal and paternal genome, and examines their role in evolution and in human diseases.

Pietro Cippà will take up his position as Professor of Nephrology in the faculty of Medicine on 1 April 2025. He is a specialist in internal medicine and nephrology and holds a double doctorate in medicine and natural sciences. At the same time, he will become Head of Nephrology and Transplant Immunology at the University Hospital Basel.

He completed his academic education at the University of Zurich, where he completed both his medical studies and his doctorates. His first doctorate in medicine dealt with the development of new instruments for the endoscopic extraction of the radial artery. For his second doctorate in natural sciences, he investigated the pharmacological modulation of apoptosis in lymphocytes for preventing transplant rejection reactions and inducing tolerance.

After completing his studies, Cippà continued to specialize in nephrology and gained extensive clinical and research experience, including his time as a postdoc at the University of Southern California, where he conducted research on the mechanisms of renal regeneration. Since 2018, he has been the head of nephrology and a research laboratory at Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale in Lugano, where he also served as Medical Director of the internal medicine department.

Promotion

The University Council has promoted Professor Denise Traber to associate professor effective 1 January 2025. Denise Traber has been assistant professor of political science with a focus on political sociology in the Department of Social Sciences since 1 January 2020.

Five adjunct professorships

The University Council has also approved the decision by the Senate to appoint the following adjunct professorships in the Faculty of Medicine:

• Dr. Matthias Betz for Endocrinology and Diabetology
• Prof. Dr. med. Dr. phil. Cristina Granziera for Neurology (with simultaneous “Umhabilitation”, transfer of authorization to teach)
• Dr. Gregor Leibundgut for Cardiology
• Dr. med. Dr. phil. Dr. habil. Manuel Trachsel for Biomedical Ethics
• PD Dr. med. Dr. phil. David Winkler for Neurology