“Keep a childlike curiosity”

At the Sparkling Re­search cele­bra­tion, Vice Pre­si­dent Elisa­beth Stark handed out 12 awards as UZH honored ex­cep­tional accom­plish­ments in re­search, inno­vation and aca­demic career development.

Although cold and wet Feb­ru­ary weather pre­vailed out­side, a fes­tive at­mos­phere spread in­side the lec­ture hall of UZH’s main build­ing on Thurs­day even­ing on the 6 February 2025. Elisa­beth Stark, Vice Pre­si­dent Re­search, wel­comed re­sear­chers and nu­me­rous guests to the Sparkling Re­search gala. For her in­tro­duc­tion, she high­lighted UZH’s “ex­cel­lent re­search”, which is re­flec­ted in areas such as the five on­going Uni­ver­sity Re­search Prio­ri­ty Pro­grams and the UZH Space Hub in Düben­dorf, which managed to bring the space com­pany Star­lab Space on board at the end of last year.

“These achieve­ments and many others are the re­sult of our sci­en­tists’ hard work,” ex­plained Stark, who then had the honor of intro­duc­ing the re­ci­pi­ents of the Men­tor­ing Award, the FAN Award, the 3R Award and the fel­lows of the UZH Entre­pre­neur Fel­low­ship Pro­gram. “Each of these awards re­pre­sents out­stand­ing re­search achieve­ments and is proof of the vi­brant re­search en­viron­ment at the Uni­ver­sity of Zurich,” she said.

Guest of honor: Pascal Gygax

Before pro­ceed­ing with the award ce­re­mony, Stark wel­comed Pas­cal Gy­gax, a psy­cho­lin­gu­ist and psy­cho­lo­gist from the Uni­ver­sity of Fri­bourg who re­ceived the pres­ti­gious Mar­cel Benoist Prize last year – the most sig­ni­fi­cant prize in the Swiss sci­en­ti­fic com­mu­ni­ty. Gy­gax re­ceived his award for his work on mas­cu­li­nized lan­guage and how it in­flu­en­ces our per­cep­tion of the world.

As the guest of honor, he de­livered an im­pas­sioned plea about sci­ence as the cu­mu­la­tive and col­la­bo­ra­tive ef­fort of many re­searchers. “A single study, a single pa­per is worth nothing,” he said. “We de­pend on each other.” Ad­dres­sing the many young re­searchers, he ex­plained that it’s al­ways about ques­tion­ing every­thing: “Keep a child­like curi­osity and con­stant­ly ask ques­tions. And work with people whom you value and who res­pect you.”

UZH Mentoring Awards 2025

Pascal Gy­gax’s re­marks flowed seam­less­ly into the pre­sen­ta­tion of the UZH Men­tor­ing Award, which is pre­sent­ed by the Gra­duate Cam­pus to out­stand­ing super­vi­sors of doc­tor­al stud­ents. Doc­tor­al stu­dents are also the ones who no­mi­nate po­ten­tial award re­ci­pi­ents, who are then se­lect­ed by a jury of early-career re­sear­chers from all of UZH’s seven fa­cul­ties. From a long­list of 32 no­mi­na­tions, the fol­low­ing four in­di­vi­duals were se­lect­ed for the UZH Men­tor­ing Awards 2025:

Prof. Silvio Brugger, Faculty of Medicine

Professor Jörg Frey, Faculty of Theology and the Study of Religion

Professor Anikó Hannák, Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics

Dr. Kannan Venugopal, Postdoc, Vetsuisse Faculty

“These four award re­ci­pi­ents em­body the high­est stand­ards in sup­port­ing and guid­ing early-career sci­en­tists,” re­marked Vice Pre­si­dent Stark, thank­ing them for their in­spir­ing commitment.

FAN Awards 2025

The FAN Award is a dis­tinc­tion from the UZH Alum­ni’s Re­search Ta­lent De­ve­lop­ment Fund award­ed to early-career re­sear­chers in re­cog­ni­tion of out­stand­ing sci­en­ti­fic achieve­ments. The prize comes with an award of CHF 5,000 and is given in the fields of Law and Eco­no­mics, Me­di­cine and Na­tu­ral Sci­en­ces, and Hu­ma­ni­ties and So­cial Sci­en­ces. Each fa­cul­ty at UZH could no­mi­nate two ex­cel­lent ad­vanced PhD stu­dents or early post­docs, who were then given the op­por­tu­nity to pre­sent their re­search to a jury. The jury se­lec­ted the fol­low­ing three re­sear­chers for the 2025 FAN Awards:

Dr. Moritz F. Adam, Arts and Social Sciences

Dr. sc. nat. Dominik Groos, Medicine and Natural Sciences

Dr. Stefania Ionescu, Law and Economics

The award re­ci­pi­ents pre­sent­ed their work in brief talks. Moritz F. Adam stu­dies con­cepts of time and apo­ca­lyp­ti­cism in Hel­len­is­tic Juda­ism. Dominik Gross in­ves­ti­gates a tiny brain re­gion (la­te­ral ha­be­nu­la) and its in­flu­ence on risk-re­lat­ed de­ci­sions. Stefania Iones­cu analy­zes vi­si­bi­li­ty al­lo­ca­tion sys­tems and their in­flu­ence on society.

UZH 3R Award 2024

As Elisa­beth Stark ex­plained, she her­self es­tab­lished this award in 2023 to­gether with the Office for Ani­mal Wel­fare and 3R. The prize re­cog­ni­zes out­stand­ing con­tri­bu­tions to the re­place­ment, re­duc­tion and re­fine­ment of ani­mal ex­pe­ri­ments, known as the 3R prin­ci­ples (Re­place, Re­duce, Re­fine). This award there­fore sup­ports ef­forts by UZH staff to pro­mote ethi­cal re­search prac­ti­ces. Stark added that last year’s 3R award win­ner Giu­seppe Es­po­sito has since also re­ceived the in­ter­na­tio­nal Hu­mane Edu­ca­tion and Re­duc­tion Grant from the Johns Hop­kins Cen­ter for Al­ter­na­tives to Ani­mal Test­ing, which un­der­scores the sig­ni­fi­cance of this work in re­duc­ing ani­mal test­ing in mi­cro­sur­gi­cal train­ing. The fol­low­ing in­di­vi­duals re­ceived the UZH 3R Award for 2024:

Dr. Petra Seebeck

PD Dr. Benjamin Ineichen

Veteri­na­rian Petra See­beck has de­ve­loped guide­lines and train­ing courses for mouse sur­ge­ry. The phy­si­cian and neu­ro­sci­en­tist Ben­jamin In­eichen in­ves­ti­gates how the trans­fer­abil­ity of ani­mal ex­pe­ri­ment re­sults to hu­mans can be im­proved. See­beck and In­eichen have also been re­cog­nized with a na­tion­al prize – the 3R Award and the Cul­ture of Care Award 2024 – by the Swiss 3R Com­pe­tence Centre. See article in UZH News

UZH Entrepreneur Fellows

The UZH Entre­pre­neur Fel­low­ship Pro­gram, award­ed by the In­no­va­tion Hub, is a spring­board for mem­bers of the UZH com­mu­nity to build their own com­pany. The pro­gram sup­ports young sci­en­tists who want to es­tab­lish a start-up based on their UZH re­search. It pro­vides up to CHF 150,000 in fi­nanc­ing along with ad­vi­sory ser­vices and access to im­por­tant net­works so that re­sear­chers can de­mon­strate their pro­duct’s proof of con­cept and mar­ket readi­ness. The fol­low­ing three re­sear­chers suc­cess­ful­ly com­ple­ted the pro­gram in 2024:

Dr. sc. Jelena Skorucak, MedTech

Pietro Oldrati, MedTech

Michal Shoshan, BioTech

They de­livered short re­ports about their work. Sleep re­sear­cher and data analyst Jelena Skorucak is de­ve­lop­ing a plat­form that can de­tect signs of epi­lep­tic dis­orders in chil­dren’s brain waves. The com­pu­ter sci­en­tist Pietro Oldrati is work­ing on a di­gi­tal analy­sis de­vice for people suf­fer­ing from fa­tigue con­di­tions. The che­mist Michal Sho­shan is de­ve­lop­ing novel pro­tein mo­le­cules with her spin-off meta­Lead The­ra­peu­tics AG to fil­ter toxic me­tals like lead from organs.

Impressively diverse

At the con­clu­sion of the event, the Vice Pre­si­dent em­pha­sized the im­pres­sive di­ver­sity of re­search pro­jects and the ex­cel­lence of the in­di­vi­duals who re­ceived honors and ac­co­lades. Fol­low­ing the array of in­for­mation about re­search and in­no­va­tion, an apéro was then held in the light-filled court­yard, which was like­ly wel­come to most par­ti­ci­pants. There they had the op­por­tu­nity to delve deeper into what they had heard in per­so­nal con­ver­sa­tions with the res­ear­chers and to dis­co­ver the Office of the Vice Pre­si­dent’s sup­port of­fer­ings for re­search, in­no­va­tion and early-career development.