Intellectual Property Rights and Data Protection

4. Acquaint yourself with the local context and recent developments. Get help from your supervisors, they are responsible to ensure safety and practical arrangements. 5. Inform your embassy of your presence in the destination country (e.g., Itineris registration).

Accommodation

Carefully plan your accommodations with your supervisor for stays abroad in case your research requires it (e.g. field work). Accommodation is often offered by the host institution abroad; else book safe and trust-worthy hotels (avoid using “couch-serve”, Airbnb and similar offers).

In case of an incident or an emergency, act as follows:

1. Look for local aid and inform your local contact and line manager (the numbers are those you filled-in on your Travel Safety Form). 2. If local help is not an option, call your line manager, HQ contact person or the Swiss TPH 24/7

Hotline. The hotline will offer you guidance and may trigger the emergency cascade if needed.

Intellectual Property (IP) rights and Data Protection

Working on a thesis as an MSc or PhD student may result in discoveries and inventions. Of note, discoveries or inventions – whether or not patentable – may include computer software, research data (e.g., novel diagnostic, drug or vaccine targets) or research tools, and all proprietary information associated with any of these items. Swiss TPH is a co-owner of discoveries and inventions made by MSc or PhD students during their work at Swiss TPH or while under supervision by Swiss TPH employees. The level of IP rights of the student depends on various issues, including the funder of the project and / or the supervisor, the rules established among research partners of networks the thesis may belong to, or the level of independence of the student work. With regard to the latter, Swiss TPH theses are often based on on-going projects and partly existing data where students may add a component or further analyse existing data. Whereas students have copyrights and co-authorship rights for their publications as generally defined in science, IP rights may be more restricted in such cases. Instead, in cases where the student generates genuinely new inventions entirely independent of pre-existing data or resources of Swiss TPH supervisors, IP rights of the student may be more substantial, though shared with Swiss TPH (for a brief overview of useful guidelines, the student is encouraged to consult the following website posted by the University of Toronto. Thus far, IP rights have never been a source of conflict in the long history of Swiss TPH research. However, if you work on a specific domain where you anticipate IP rights to become a potentially conflicting issue, we recommend reading the aforementioned guidelines and discussing the issue early on with your direct supervisor. In such rare cases, details may be clarified in advance and become subject of special agreements. The ownership of research data generated as part of the thesis need to be clarified with the supervisor. In the majority of Swiss TPH theses, data used in the research may originate at least in part not only from the work done by the student but generated in the framework of larger projects. All rules of data ownership, data use and publication of such projects may thus apply, including the request to delete data on any private (non-Swiss TPH) hardware at the end of the theses work. Before using such data for further research beyond the thesis, supervisors and / or the principal investigators of the projects need to be informed to establish a new agreement.

Data protection Please remember that data used for research must in all cases, and with no exception, be fully anonymous. If you collect or use data of subjects, files that contain personal data (e.g. name, date of birth, address, contact details etc.) must be safely stored and protected. Such personal information must be separated from the files used for the data analyses, using an anonymous ID number for the linkage to the full data, if needed. You should under no circumstances keep such personal files on your computer. Files containing names of subjects should never be sent by e-mail or other media.

Initiated in 2005, with funds from the State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI), the Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) became a foundation in 2008 and is currently supported by twelve Swiss universities (Universities of Basel, Bern, Fribourg, Geneva, Lausanne, Lucerne, Neuchâtel, Svizzera Italiana and Zurich and Universities of Applied Sciences Bern (BFH), ZHAW in Winterthur and SUPSI in Southern Switzerland). The visionary model of SSPH+ is based on the view that in a small country like Switzerland, no single institution has the critical mass to cover all public health relevant areas. As of 2019, a total of ~20 institutions affiliated with the ten founding universities build the core of SSPH+. As a foundation, SSPH+ does not have a “faculty”. However, counting all public health oriented faculty members at the partner universities, the SSPH+ “faculty” consists of more than 200 SSPH+ Fellows, supervising over 400 PhD students. Given the strong commitment of the University of Basel in public health, Basel has become the strongest pillar of SSPH+, with six partner institutes and over 50 University of Basel faculty members affiliated with SSPH+ (of which ca. 40 from Swiss TPH). Whereas the Dean, Nino Künzli, since 1 January 2015, is an employee of Swiss TPH, the other Directorate positions (in total two full-time-equivalents) are employees of the partner institutions in Zurich, Lugano and Geneva.

As SERI’s central funding contributions came to an end mid-2017, SSPH+ moved into a new innovative era where funding from its twelve universities and other partners now secures the mission of SSPH+ and ensures provision of central services to its prime partners.

Highlights of the collaborative SSPH+ activities relate to teaching and training offers on the PhD and post-graduate level. These courses and programmes are led by network partners. The most relevant one for Swiss TPH PhD candidates is the SSPH+ Inter-university Graduate Campus. It is open to all PhD candidates formally registered and approved as PhD candidates in one of the SSPH+ partner universities and supervised by any SSPH+ faculty member. More information on page 44.

The current E.U. funded PhD Fellowship Program GlobalP3HS is another flagship of SSPH+, bringing 50 competitively selected PhD students to Switzerland – with some dozen soon settled at Swiss TPH. Global P3HS students at Swiss TPH are expected to join the PPHS programme.

For further information see: www.ssphplus.ch and the recent commentary in Lancet. SSPH+ is also the owner of the International Journal of Public Health (IJPH). With its global public health focus, IJPH is a potential outlet for publishing PhD thesis papers. The editorial office, led by Dr. Anke Berger, is located at Swiss TPH.