Two new professors at the University of Basel

Professor Datta is to become the new clinical professor of neurodevelopmental pediatrics in the Faculty of Medicine with a position at the University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB). He will take up his new position on 1 February 2024. At the same time, he will be named Deputy Chair of Pediatrics at the UKBB and Director of the Neurodevelopmental Pediatrics Department, where he has worked since 2008 and served as interim director since 2022.

Datta studied medicine at the University of Basel, where he earned his doctorate in 2000. In addition to the UKBB, he completed his clinical education at the Ospedale regionale Beata Vergine Mendrisio, the Hôpital des enfants des HUG in Geneva, and the cantonal hospital of Aarau. In 2004, he was officially certified as a specialist in pediatric and adolescent medicine, and in pediatric neurology in 2008, as well as in developmental pediatrics in 2012, and received certificates in electroencephalography in 2009 and sleep medicine in 2015. From 2006 to 2007, he conducted postdoctoral research at the Hôpital Necker Enfants Malades in Paris and the Service Hospitalier Frédéric Joliot in Orsay (France).

Datta qualified as a professor at the University of Basel in 2018, became head doctor and director of epileptology and electroencephalography and co-director of the Center for Sleep and Chronomedicine at the University of Basel Clinics, and has since led a research group in the Department of Clinical Research.

Datta’s focal areas are pediatric epileptology, electroencephalography and sleep medicine, with an emphasis on understanding the complexity of neuronal networks, including especially the epileptic brain compared to the healthy, developing brain. He also aims to elucidate the plasticity and regenerative capacity of the brain, especially during sleep, the effects of epilepsy on cognition, and also the impact of antiseizure medications and interventions, with the goal of developing individually-customized precision medicine to treat epilepsy and related disorders.

The University Council has elected Professor Julia Laura Rischbieter to the position of professor of the history of capitalism in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. She will take up the post in the Department of History on 1 September 2024.

Rischbieter studied history, sociology and political science at the Free University of Berlin and Humboldt University in Berlin. She earned her doctorate in 2009 at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder. She then worked as a research associate in the Department of History at Humboldt University in Berlin.

She was appointed to the position of assistant professor at the University of Konstanz in 2016 and named professor of global economic history in 2023. Various grants and fellowships have taken her to the University of London, the University of California at Irvine and Berkeley, Boston University, the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC and elsewhere.

Rischbieter teaches and conducts research on modern social and economic history in the global context. Her dissertation examined how individual actors can influence global markets and how globalization processes changed consumption habits and government actions in the German Empire. Her research over the past decade has focused on the history of capitalism and the history of financial crises. She directs several research projects pertaining to these topics: Since 2018, she has been spokesperson for the German Research Foundation’s “Doing Debt” network and has served as a member of the Committee to Research the History of the German Federal Ministry of Finance, where she leads a subproject on the history of the regulation of financial markets beginning in the 1970s.

The University Council has additionally announced four promotions, effective 1 February 2024:

• Professor Luzius Cavelti is being promoted to associate professor. He has served as (tenure-track) assistant professor of tax law in the Faculty of Law since 2019.
• Professor Gianluca Crippa is being promoted to full professor. In 2011, he was appointed (tenure-track) assistant professor of analysis in the Faculty of Science and promoted a year later to associate professor.
• Professor Günther Fink is being promoted to full professor. He has served as associate professor of epidemiology and home economics (Eckenstein-Geigy endowed professorship) with a position at the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) since 2017. Since 2023, the professorship has been shared between the Faculty of Science and the Faculty of Business and Economics.
• Professor Martin Röösli is being promoted to full professor. He was appointed as associate professor of environmental epidemiology in the Faculty of Science in 2016. He previously held a temporary position as assistant professor at the Swiss TPH.