Three new assistant professorships at the University of Basel
The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has approved the financing of three new assistant professorships at the University of Basel. The projects come from the fields of biomedical engineering, Middle East studies and eye research and receive an average of CHF 1.6 million in funding.
18 December 2019
SNSF Eccellenza Professorial Fellowships are aimed at highly qualified young researchers who aspire to a permanent professorship. The fellowships cover their salary and project funding of up to one million Swiss francs for five years, which allows them to lead a research project with their own team.
The fellowships are connected with an appointment to the position of assistant professor at the institution chosen by the researchers for their project. Three scientists successfully applied for a fellowship at the University of Basel and are supported by the SNSF with an average of CHF 1.6 million:
- Dr. Felix Franke received his doctorate in computer science from the Technical University of Berlin in 2011. Since then he has been doing research at ETH Zurich’s Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel. His project at the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB) deals with early visual processing in the context of eye movement control.
- Dr. Aline Schlaepfer completed her PhD at the University of Geneva in 2012, before performing postdoctoral research at the American University of Beirut (Lebanon) and Princeton University (USA). Currently she is working as a maître-assistante in the Department of Arabic Studies of the University of Geneva. Her project at the Near and Middle Eastern Studies Department of the University of Basel addresses the effects of the Ottoman heritage on young Arab nation states such as Jordan and Iraq.
- Dr. Mathieu Sarracanie received his doctorate in physics from the Université Paris-Sud (France) in 2011. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Harvard University Department of Physics and Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital (USA). Since 2017 he is heading the Laboratory for Adaptable MRI Technology at the Department of Biomedical Engineering of the University of Basel. There, he will also carry out his project on the detection of acute stroke exploiting the physics of low-field magnetic resonance.
The SNSF is awarding a total of 34 new SNSF Eccellenza Professorial Fellowships and 11 SNSF Eccellenza Grants this year. The 45 funded researchers will take up their posts at seven Swiss universities and both federal institutes of technology.
Further information
Reto Caluori, University of Basel, Communications, tel. +41 61 207 24 95, email: reto.caluori@unibas.ch
