University of Basel

The University of Basel is the oldest university in Switzerland and one of the 20 oldest universities of the world. It was founded on 4 April 1460, with a foundation ceremony held at the Basel Münster. During the 16th century, the Faculty of Medicine was renowned throughout Europe and could easily compete with the best faculties in Italy, France, the Netherlands and England. Early influential medical teachers include Paracelsus, Andreas Vesal, Felix Platter, Caspar Bauhin, Theodor Zwinger and Johann Niklaus Stupanus.

Other illustrious figures that have been lecturers at the University of Basel include Friedrich Nietzsche, Karl Barth, Daniel and Jakob Bernoulli, Jacob Burckhardt, Karl Jaspers, August Socin, among others. The variety of people involved in academia turned Basel into an early centre of printing and humanism. In 1938, Elsa Mahler is appointed as the first female professor at the University of Basel.

The University library was founded shortly after 1460. Today, with more than 3 million books and manuscripts, it is one of the biggest libraries in Switzerland. The University is supported by the cantons of Basel-Stadt and Basel-Landschaft. The University has been self-administered since 1996, with the “Universitätsrat” as the highest decision-making and supervisory body. Members of this body are elected by the two cantons of Basel. Dr. Beat Oberlin chairs the Universitätsrat. The current rector is Professor Andrea Schenker-Wicki (since 1 August 2015). The University counts approximately 12,000 students and 320 professors.

The University of Basel has produced five Nobel Prize winners in Physiology or Medicine: Paul H. Müller (1948) for work on DDT; Tadeus Reichstein (1950) for work on hormones; Werner Arber (1978) for work on restriction enzymes; and Niels K. Jerne and Georges J.F. Köhler (1984) for work on the basic immunological theories and mono-clonal antibodies.

Students at the University of Basel can take advantage of a variety of activities on offer, including sports, language courses, music, etc. An online marketplace is available at www.markt.unibas.ch, where students can buy and sell all kinds of goods for reasonable prices.

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 43.

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 commentary in Lancet from 2017.

SSPH+ is also the owner of the International Journal of Public Health (IJPH) and Public Health Reviews (PHR). With its global public health focus, IJPH is a potential outlet for publishing PhD thesis papers, while PHR publishes Policy Briefs and Reviews of all forms. The editorial offices of both journals, led by Dr. Anke Berger, are located at Swiss TPH.

Guidelines for the Master Degrees in Infection Biology and Epidemiology