Breaking Down Barriers Together

Keep challen­ging yourself, setting goals, trying new things, being socially and physically active, traveling and playing an active role in the community: these are the ingredients for aging well. Research at UZH shows how multi­faceted aging is and how we can stay fit for longer.  Research has to date been very creative in recog­nizing which health complaints older people have or will have. “At present, around 90% of all research and innovation work targets 10% of all age-related phenomena,” says Martin, “in our research, we do it the other way round and focus on the remaining 90%.” The geronto­psychologist is co-director of the inter­disciplinary University Research Priority Program Dynamics Of Healthy Aging and director of the new Healthy Longevity Center, which was set up at UZH in 2022 with support from the Velux Foundation.

The aim of the center is to develop innovative approaches to promote functional abilities and quality of life in old age. The key thing here is keeping in mind the hetero­geneity of aging. “To date, research into aging and health has aimed to establish what over 65s have in common. Averaged out, this quickly leads you to specific health risks,” says Martin, “but we’re not interested in averages, we want to know about the diversity and hetero­geneity of aging.” So, for example, the MOASIS study analyzes older people’s everyday behaviors by measuring mobility, activity and social inter­action using digital trackers. This allows researchers to gain a better under­standing of what healthy older people do every day and how this impacts their health. 

One of the key things is setting goals. “The pursuit of goals is important in keeping us active and happy,” says Alexandra Freund. The develop­mental psychologist is interested in how and why people set goals during the course of their life and how these change over time. Freund’s studies have found that while young people often set them­selves goals that involve gaining something – for example pursuing a career or starting a family – older people are more concerned with avoiding or compen­sating for losses. At all stages of life, the path leading to the goal should be a positive experience. “If the path isn’t right, then neither is the goal,” says the psychologist.

While our health depends on our biological pre­dis­positions and our behavior, it is also inextricably linked to that of animals and the environ­ment. HIV, SARS and more recently COVID-19 have shown the dramatic social impact of zoonotic diseases, in other words the trans­mission of pathogens from animals to humans. And effectively tackling zoonoses, as well as the growing antibiotic resistance and many other health risks, will require the inter­­disciplinary scientific cooperation in One Health research. The term One Health designates a research approach that integrates diverse disciplinary view­points to understand the inter­­relation­ships between human health, animal health and the environ­­ment.

UZH played a pioneering role in 2023, setting up the One Health Institute, the first of its kind in Europe. The goals are ambitious: “UZH has the potential and ambition to be a leader in One Health, both nationally and inter­­nationally, in the longer term,” says Vice President Elisabeth Stark. UZH is already among the leading universities in many research areas that are fundamental to the One Health approach. The Vetsuisse Faculty and the Faculty of Medicine will contribute their expertise on zoonoses, drug resistance, metabolic diseases and cancer, as well as their respective capacities in epidemiology and evolutionary medicine. The Faculty of Science will bring knowledge, methodologies and data from plant sciences and ecology. The newly established One Health Institute pools this inter­disciplinary expertise, develops it, and therefore provides positive impetus for a holistic approach to health. 

UZH the First European University to Establish One Health Institute
Researchers from veterinary medicine, human medicine and natural sciences are joining forces to establish Europe’s first university-based One Health Institute at UZH. Together, they want to explore how the health of humans, animals and the environ­ment we share are connected.
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Focus on One Health
The establish­ment of the One Health Institute at UZH is well under way. An inaugural symposium will be held on 21 September, focusing on the two key research areas, epidemio­logy and evolution.
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Use It or Lose It: Staying Active in Old Age
Keeping active in later life keeps you healthy. MOASIS is a study conducted by UZH to examine how older people live and the effect this has on their fitness levels and well-being. The message is clear: use it or lose it.
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In Pursuit of Happiness
Get rich, volunteer for a good cause, stay in shape: personal goals give us direction and purpose. They also change over our lifespan. For lasting happiness, the journey is at least as important as the destination.
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“Warren Buffet isn’t past it”
We should give older people more oppor­tunities for engage­ment, say Harald Gall and Mike Martin. The computer scientist and psychologist share their views on healthy long­evity, a more nuanced view of old age and what matters to people.
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Adding Years to Life and Life to Years
Medical advances mean people are living longer. However, they often face multiple conditions or illnesses in later life. Geriatric medicine is seeking both to increase healthy years of life and to get a better handle on multi­morbidity.
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Researchers at the UZH Department of History are currently investi­gating cases of sexual abuse in the Roman Catholic Church since the mid-20th century. This research is being conducted at the behest of organi­zations such as the Swiss Bishops’ Conference. A four-member research team led by professors Monika Dommann and Marietta Meier investi­gated the subject matter in a one-year pilot study. Their research involves not only all dioceses in every language region in Switzerland, but also state-church legal structures and religious communities, thereby ensuring that the Swiss Catholic Church was considered in its entirety. The results of the study were announced last September in a press conference.

The research team found evidence for a wide range of instances of sexual abuse, from proble­matic boundary vio­lations to systematic abuse that spanned years. According to Monika Dommann and Marietta Meier, the identified cases are “undoubtedly only the tip of the iceberg.”  The UZH historians’ pilot project is the first systematic academic attempt to deal with the subject of sexual abuse in the Swiss Catholic Church. According to the research team, future projects would need to consult archival materials and collect additional data. This would allow for more detailed state­ments to be made about the quantitative dimensions of sexual abuse as well as any chrono­logical or geo­graphic patterns.

The UZH Ethno­graphic Museum (VMZ) is also currently doing a deep dive into its own history. Various cultural objects that are part of the museum’s current collection have a colonial past. Questions sur­rounding the provenance of these objects are currently being dealt with by a number of museums and collections. In February of last year, a study by Swiss museums (including the VMZ) and Nigerian partner institutions concluded that many of the items held in Swiss collections from the former Kingdom of Benin had been looted.

But what should be done with objects with unclear or dubious origins? “Our emphasis is on engaging in a dialogue with the communities of origin,” says VMZ curator Alexis Malefakis. “An alternative to simply returning the items is to enter into a conver­sation that is based on trust.” For Malefakis’s Honeymoon? exhibition, which ran until mid-April 2024, the curator visited villages in Rwanda that he and archaeo­logist Andre Ntagwabira from the Rwanda Cultural Heritage Academy had identified as the communities of origin for some of the objects. “Opinions about what should happen to the objects differed greatly. Some people wanted the objects back, while others thought it was good that we were taking care of them,” he says.

Meanwhile, anthropo­logist Andrea Migliano deals with a completely different aspect of cultural heritage. Her research focuses on the evolution of social networks and human cooperation. Cooperation has been part of humans’ recipe for success for at least 400,000 years. Our ancient ancestors – probably Homo erectus – effectively organized them­selves in powerful groups to hunt wild animals together. These organized hunting expeditions were one of the corner­stones of the cooperative behavior that sets humans apart. “Without collective intelli­gence, humans wouldn’t have been able to forge ahead,” says Migliano.

To some extent, the processes that unfolded among these groups back in the mists of time can still be observed in the few hunter-gatherer societies that still exist today. One example is the Agta, an ethnic group in the Philippines living in remote forest areas close to the coast in the north­east of the island of Luzon. In the shallow waters around the shore, they fish for squid and other sea creatures in small groups according to traditional rules that have been passed down for thousands of years. “The children learn from a young age to cooperate in the daily search for food,” says Migliano, who has been working with this group and researching their way of life for around 10 years. For her, modern hunter-gatherer groups provide the best insights into how and why humans developed cooperative behavior in the past.

Abuse in the Catholic Church
An inde­pendent team of historians was given unprece­dented access to church archives to investi­gate cases of sexual abuse within the Swiss Catholic Church. Historians from UZH have now docu­mented 1,002 cases of sexual abuse committed by Catholic clergy, church staff and members of Catholic orders in Switzerland since the mid-20th century. 
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Benin Bronzes in the Spotlight
Eight Swiss museums, including UZH’s Ethno­graphic Museum, have come together under the Swiss Benin Initiative (BIS) to work with Nigeria in investi­gating the prove­nance of their holdings from the histori­cal kingdom of Benin. Alexis Malefakis, who curates the museum’s African collection, discusses the project, the limi­tations of prove­nance research and the question of restitution.
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Over­looked by Europe
For decades, the Ethno­graphic Museum saw its mission in depicting the world around us. Now, the museum has started taking a critical look at the prove­nance of its collections in an attempt to re-frame the history of its colonial-era exhibits.
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Catching Squid Together
The very first humans knew that cooperation and division of labor could bring advan­tages and help them survive. Today, anthro­pologist Andrea Migliano conducts research into the social net­works of modern hunter-gatherer cultures.
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Driven to Work by the “Fahri”
The Swiss Amish in the US city of Berne still speak a language called Shwitzer. It derives from the Bernese German dialect spoken by the Emmental Anabaptists. Far from being archaic, Shwitzer is a highly inno­vative and dynamic language.
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The launch of ChatGPT by US company OpenAI at the end of 2022 took the world by storm. People were astonished to discover what artificial intelli­gence can do. The chatbot can generate texts of varying levels of sophisti­­cation, summarize academic papers, write computer code and even trans­late from one programming language into another. Linguist Noah Bubenhofer believes that this techno­­logy will also change the nature of academic work. He sees ChatGPT as a mix of a programming environ­­ment and a type­­writer. “For me as a linguist, this means that I can perform a quanti­tative analysis of word frequency of particular expressions within a corpus of text, for example. ChatGPT can then generate code to turn this analysis into a chart,” he says.

ChatGPT imitates human intelli­gence but does not possess intelli­gence itself. Large language models have many abilities, but Bubenhofer thinks that they are often over­­estimated artificial intelligence. UZH legal scholar Florent Thouvenin holds a similar view. Thouvenin has been investigating the societal impact of algorithmic systems and artificial intelli­gence. “AI is no wonder tool,” he says. “Chatbots like ChatGPT can compute a great deal of infor­mation very quickly – but they can’t under­­stand or think, and they don’t have a will of their own.” The legal scholar thinks that this new techno­logy will primarily present oppor­tunities. He maintains that it’s important to shape AI in a way that mini­­mizes risks and seizes oppor­­tunities.

Working together with partners in Japan, Brazil, Australia and Israel, he is working on the AI Policy Project, which analyzes various legal systems and how they are responding to the advances in AI.  The project examines countries that – like Switzerland – need to think care­fully about how they want to position them­selves in relation to the regulatory super­powers of the EU and US in order to promote the develop­ment of this techno­logy while protecting their own citizens from the down­sides. Political discussion surrounding this critical issue is still in its infancy in many countries, including in Switzerland.

Digital techno­logies are also revolutionizing the medical field. In the future, it will be possible to create digital twins that simulate how our bodies function. “Digital twins will be our partners. They will be by our side and advise us,” says physician Claudia Witt. The UZH professor and co-director of the Digital Society Initiative (DSI) has been working on one of the DSI’s strategic projects, a study that out­lines possible future scenarios for AI applications in medicine. One of these applications involves the use of digital twins. According to the study’s authors, the concept of digital twins can be used to “identify key issues for the future appli­cation of AI in medicine.”

This digital techno­logy is also finding its way into the operating room. Robots are already used in surgery today, but they are guided solely by visual infor­mation. “Modern imaging is very helpful when planning an operation. But if something unexpected happens, the surgeon has to rely on their own skill and intuition,” says spine specialist Mazda Farshad, who serves as medical director of Balgrist University Hospital and professor in the UZH Faculty of Medicine.

Farshad is working with Philip Fürnstahl, a basic research specialist, on state-of-the-art robots that can be used as assistants in the operating room. Fürnstahl is a professor of ortho­pedic research at UZH specializing in the appli­cation of computer techno­logies. Both researchers are part of the FAROS project team (Functionally Accurate Robotic Surgery), which receives funding from Horizon 2020, the EU research and innovation program.

FAROS is developing surgical robots that can see, hear and feel thanks to numerous sensors and the use of AI. For example, the robots learn how to hear and feel by analyzing vibro­acoustic signals. These signals are transmitted via a contact micro­phone that is affixed to the patient’s skin and measures the resonance of sound waves in their body.

“Balgrist University Hospital offers ideal conditions for testing robots, as we opened a state-of-the-art research and teaching center for surgery – known as OR-X – in August 2023,” says Fürnstahl. The initial phase of the project has received seed money from the TRANSFORM funding program. OR-X consists of a full-fledged research operating theater and several training labs where operations can be carried out from A to Z. “This is also extremely important for the next generation of surgeons,” he says. “They can learn in real-world conditions, including working together with robots.”

No Wonder Tool
AI has the potential to make our lives easier in many respects, but the techno­logy also harbors many dangers. Legal scholar Florent Thouvenin is working with scholars around the globe on ideas about how to best regulate artificial intelli­gence.
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“Like a Swiss army knife”
ChatGPT is over­rated as artificial intelli­gence and under­rated as a language model, linguist Noah Bubenhofer says. Bubenhofer, philosopher Hans-Johann Glock and computational linguist Rico Sennrich discuss how chatbots could change science, universities and everyday work.
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Advan­tages and Risks of AI in Education
ChatGPT can write, edit, simplify and translate a wide variety of texts. But what are the advan­tages and risks for the education system? A podium discussion by the Department of Computational Linguistics and the Digital Society Initiative attempted to find answers.
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Digital Trinity
Digitali­zation is taking on certain social functions of religion. Faith in divine decisions is being replaced by our faith in algo­rithmic selection, says communi­cations researcher Michael Latzer.
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Our Digital Doppel­gangers
Artificial intelligence is also revolu­tionizing the world of medicine. In the future it will be possible to create digital twins that simulate various processes in our body. These digital represen­tations of ourselves will be able to help us diagnose and treat diseases. 
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The Operating Room of the Future
The inno­vative OR-X at the Balgrist University Hospital is an exact copy of an operating room. Here, surgeons can train their skills and team up with researchers to develop computer-assisted surgical methods. This speeds up the translation of state-of-the-art surgical inno­vations into clinical practice and benefits patients.
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Robots with a Deft Touch
Surgery is all about precision. Physicians need a lot of experience and specialist know­ledge in order to navigate all the tasks that they need to perform during an operation. In the future, multi­sensory surgical robots with sensors featuring visual, auditory and haptic function­ality are expected to auto­nomously take on various individual steps during operations and support the surgeons providing treat­ment. Researchers from the University of Zurich are working towards this goal along­​​​​​​​side clinicians as part of the FAROS project.
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Together we’re strong. As a team we’re more innovative and flexible. The deciding factor in good and successful collaboration is not only outstanding specialist knowledge. Soft skills and other factors foster collaboration and help the team work together like a well-oiled machine. This includes shared positive emotions.

UZH economist Jochen Menges is exploring how the emotions of teams and therefore their performance can be influenced. His research has shown that we perform better when (positive) emotions are at play. Teams that have a generally positive atmosphere are much more efficient, because people can focus on their tasks – rather than figuring out who they can or can’t trust, or who is or isn’t doing their job.

However, when people are asked what positive emotions they would like to see in the workplace, it becomes clear that not everyone wants the same things. There are differences between individuals, but also between cultures. A UZH study listed the 20 most important emotions and showed them to over 18,000 people in 35 countries. It revealed that the most frequently cited emotional adjective that people would like to connect with their work is “proud” in the United States, “challenged” in Japan, “competent” in China, “satisfied” in Germany and Switzerland, and “confident” in India. 

Some teams have to work under extreme pressure, such as astronauts, researchers
in the Arctic, firefighters, and staff in hospital emergency departments. Psychologist Jan Schmutz studies what makes a successful team. “Teams succeed when their members feel safe and involved at work. Besides this feeling of safety, team reflection and a shared understanding of the work are the other two factors that make for successful teams,” says the UZH researcher.

The coronavirus pandemic made many organizations rethink their working models. UZH was no exception, introducing a 60/40 model in 2022. The rollout of the new working model was supported by a pilot study, led by psychologist Jennifer Sparr. The aim of the study was to develop and test innovative ways of working between working from home, in the office and in the lab. It found that the keys to success are managing potentially contradictory requirements and expectations, and working as a team to identify solutions that everyone can agree on. It’s about finding a balance so that everyone can work productively. “Mobile working requires more structure and at the same time more flexibility,” says Jennifer Sparr.

For know­ledge workers in particular, it’s important for produc­tivity and well­being to be able to have regular blocks in which they can focus on their own work for longer periods. Just a few short working blocks of 30 to 120 minutes in total per working day can allow them to achieve more in a short time than if they are constantly having to switch back and forth between various tasks and meetings. Tools such as FlowTeams, developed at UZH’s Department of Informatics, can help workers share infor­mation on when they need to focus and when they are open to inter­action and inter­ruption. 

Turning a scientific idea into a market­able product is particularly challenging. Start-up companies are often founded for this purpose. The success of such companies depends on finding the right people with the right skills and building a strong and efficient team. Two examples of how this can be done success­fully are the UZH startups MUVON Therapeutics develop­ment of a novel therapy platform for the regeneration of skeletal muscle tissue) and askEarth (AI-assisted analysis of real-time and accurate geo­spatial information), both of which were backed by the UZH Innovation Hub.