Board of Governors

Eva Herzog has been a member of the Swiss Council of States for the canton of Basel-Stadt since 2019 and served as President of the Council from December 2023 to December 2024. She was a member of the legislative for the Social Democratic Party (SP) in the Canton of Basel-Stadt from 2001 to 2005, and a member of the Basel-Stadt government and head of the Department of Finance from 2005 to 2020.

Eva Herzog studied history, economics and Spanish at the University of Basel and the University of Santiago de Compostela. She became politicised in the “Fair Trade Shop movement” of the time. Following her dissertation, she worked as a scientific collaborator in the Vice-Rectorate for Research at the University of Basel and as a cultural manager.

Eva Herzog has been a member of the Board of Governors of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) for 2 years, before she took over the Presidency in January 2023.

Sabina De Geest is a Professor of Nursing at the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Basel. She is also part-time Professor of Nursing at the KU Leuven in Belgium and has adjunct appointments at Johns Hopkins University, University of Pittsburgh and New York University.

She leads the PIONEER international group, an interdisciplinary research group focusing on behavioural and psychosocial issues in chronically ill persons. Driven by implementation science methodology, her research portfolio focuses on the development of innovative care models, partially powered by eHealth.

In addition, her research addresses psychosocial and behavioural pathways and their relation to outcomes in chronic illness as well as the development and testing of instruments to assess patient reported outcomes. She is a co-founder of the Swiss Implementation science Network.

Ariane Bürgin is the Head of Higher Education at the Department of Education of the Canton of Basel-Stadt. Joining the Department of Education in 1997, she has many years of experience in cantonal administration and in the political management of cantonal and intercantonal negotiation processes in the higher education sector. Through her other professional activities and various teaching and expert activities in adult education, high schools and the university, she has a broad knowledge of education policy and cross-sectoral expertise.

Ariane Bürgin studied philosophy and history in Basel and Berlin and holds a PhD in philosophy from the University of Basel and a teaching diploma for high schools.

Barbara Wieland is the Director of the federal Institute of Virology and Immunology (IVI), the national reference laboratory for diagnostics and research of highly contagious viral animal diseases and zoonoses in Switzerland. She is a veterinarian with a PhD in veterinary epidemiology from the University of Bern with over 25 years of experience in academia, international cooperation and development, research and veterinary services. She also holds a postgraduate certificate in academic practice (higher education) and in management of rural development.

After a post-doc and lectureship at the Pirbright Institute and the Royal Veterinary College in London, UK, she managed animal health projects for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation in Mongolia. She later took on the role of principial scientist at the International Livestock Research Institute in Ethiopia, where she set up the herd health team and coordinated research projects in East and West Africa and Southeast Asia. She held management functions in the CGIAR research programmes on Livestock, Livestock and Fish, and Agriculture for Nutrition and Health. 

Her research has focused on improving smallholder's access to animal health services and the effectiveness of disease control. Sustainable use of resources and equity in animal health are at the core of her research, applying interdisciplinary approaches to strengthen One Health and building on strong international and national partnerships.

François Chappuis heads the Division of Tropical and Humanitarian Medicine of the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), which focuses on the prevention and care of international travelers and on the implementation of operational and research projects in several African and Asian countries. He also heads the Department of Primary Care of the HUG since 2018.

François Chappuis is a medical doctor specialised in internal medicine and travel & tropical medicine. He holds a master in clinical tropical medicine from the University of Mahidol, Thailand, and a PhD in medical sciences from the University of Antwerp, Belgium.

He worked for Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) as a field doctor in East Africa and as a medical adviser for neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) programmes in Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda and Kenya. His teaching and research activities mainly focus on NTDs, in particular sleeping sickness, Chagas disease, kala-azar and snakebite envenoming.

Lutz Hegemann is President of Global Health and Swiss Country Affairs at Novartis. The unit focuses on transforming healthcare in low- and middle-income countries, with programmes targeting malaria, neglected tropical diseases and non-communicable diseases. He also oversees the company’s presence in sub-Saharan Africa. Lutz also represents the company both in Switzerland and internationally, building strategic partnerships across public and private sectors to advance inclusive global health innovation.

Prior to his current role, Lutz held roles of increasing responsibility since joining Novartis in 2005. He began his career as a public health physician and scientist.

Lutz is a Fellow of the Royal Society for Tropical Medicine & Hygiene and serves on the boards of various organisations focused on human health.

He has been a member of the Board of Governors of Swiss TPH since 1 January 2023.

Jacques Fellay heads the “Human Genomics of Infection and Immunity” research laboratory at the EPFL School of Life Sciences. He is also the founding director of the Precision Medicine unit at Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and the Chief Scientific Officer and co-founder of the Health2030 Genome Center in Geneva. 

He is a medical doctor and researcher with expertise in genomics, infectious diseases, and personalised health. His research at EPFL aims to decipher the genetic basis of inter-individual differences in immunity and response to viral infections. His group is investigating the role of human genetic variation in the host-pathogen battle, in the hope of shedding new light on basic biological mechanisms and of paving the way for more personalised approaches to health. At CHUV, his activities focus on demonstrating the clinical utility of genome-based approaches in medicine and on the necessary dialogue between science and society on the issues raised by genomic exploration.

Jacques Fellay played an active role in the Swiss response to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, as a member of the Swiss National COVID-19 Science Task Force. He has received multiple awards, including the National Latsis Prize in 2011 for his work on the genetic control of HIV and hepatitis C virus infections.

Rolf Borner has headed the Infrastructure & Operations Directorate in the Rectorate of the University of Basel since August 2021. The Directorate is responsible for ensuring the university's infrastructure and developing it in line with its needs.

He studied building engineering at the ETH Zurich, where he obtained his doctorate in 2004 in the field of building management. From 2005, he worked in the real estate division of the Finance Department of the Canton of Basel-Stadt, and since July 2015 he was Managing Director of Immobilien Basel-Stadt. In February 2019, the Basel government appointed him as co-head of the Real Estate Board of the University of Basel. In this role, he was significantly involved in the development of the new agreement on real estate at the University of Basel.

Alban Frei is Head of the Higher Education in the Directorate of Education, Culture and Sport of the Canton of Basel-Landschaft. He studied history, geography and German at the University of Basel and then worked at the University of Zurich and the University of Luxembourg. Since 2012 he has been a researcher at the ETH Zurich, where he obtained his doctorate with a thesis on research policy and life sciences.

Alban Frei was managing director of a cooperation project in the field of digital research infrastructures. Since 2020 he has been responsible for research management training at the University of Bern and has developed the leadership training programme “Academic Leadership - Leading at Higher Education Institutions”.

His current responsibilities as Head of Higher Education include all cantonal higher education policy dossiers, including the bi-cantonal and multi-cantonal agreements for the University of Basel, the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland FHNW and the Swiss TPH.

Deborah Studer is a scientific advisor in the National Research Division at the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation SERI, where her responsibilities include research institutions of national importance, European research infrastructure networks and various strategic projects in the field of health.

Before joining SERI, she coordinated the special programme for clinical research IICT at the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Deborah Studer studied biochemistry at the EPFL and at the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico. After completing her doctorate in biomedicine at ETH Zurich, she conducted research in the field of cardiovascular diseases at the University of Calgary in Canada.

Jürg Utzinger is the Director of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and Professor of Epidemiology at the University of Basel. He holds an MSc in environmental science, a PhD in epidemiology and pursued several years of postdoctoral research in demography and epidemiology at Princeton University in the USA.

His research, teaching and training interests pertain to the epidemiology and integrated control of neglected tropical diseases and health impact assessments of large footprint projects in low- and middle-income countries.

He is engaged in trans-national global health research consortia with ongoing projects in China, Côte d’Ivoire, South Africa and Tanzania.