Deepening Knowledge,
Broadening Perspectives

The Execu­tive Board of the Uni­ver­sity and the fa­cul­ties are work­ing to­geth­er to drive the fur­ther de­ve­lop­ment of the range of in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary courses at UZH. Thanks to the School for Trans­dis­ci­pli­nary Studies (STS), stu­dents can take in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary mo­dules no matter which fa­cul­ty they be­long to. In ad­di­tion, they learn to work with dif­fe­rent per­spec­tives at the study pro­gram level – not only in in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary de­gree pro­grams spe­cial­ly de­signed for this pur­pose, but pri­ma­ri­ly through the com­bi­na­tion of ma­jor and mi­nor pro­grams. Most stu­dents choose com­bi­na­tions within their fa­culty; how­ever, in re­cent years around a quar­ter of Ba­chelor’s stu­dents have opted for cross-fa­cul­ty ma­jor and mi­nor com­bi­na­tions. The di­ver­sity of dis­ci­plines at UZH allows stu­dents to tai­lor their stu­dies to their in­di­vi­dual in­te­rests. The co­hort of Ba­chelor’s stu­dents who start­ed their stu­dies in the Fall Se­mes­ter of 2023 and the Spring Se­mes­ter of 2024 chose a total of 346 dif­fe­rent cross-fa­culty com­bi­na­tions. The most po­pu­lar com­bi­na­tion was the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Sci­ence and Media Re­search pro­gram with Busi­ness Ad­mi­ni­str­ation (59 cases), fol­lowed by Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tration with Law (52 cases). There were 195 com­bi­na­tions that were chosen only once, in­clud­ing Po­li­ti­cal Sci­ence and Bio­me­dicine, or Mathe­ma­tics and Ja­pan­ese Studies.

One of UZH’s key goals is to in­crease per­me­abi­lity be­tween its fa­cul­ties. With this in mind, the fa­cul­ties are gra­dual­ly ex­pand­ing co­or­di­na­tion be­tween their study ar­chi­tec­tures. The re­vised 2022 mo­del frame­work or­di­nance forms an im­por­tant ba­sis for this pro­cess. The Fa­cul­ty of Me­di­cine and the Vet­suisse Fa­cul­ty are ex­cep­tions, in that they only offer single ma­jor stu­dy pro­grams. Mean­while, all other fa­cul­ties are cur­rent­ly de­ve­lop­ing mi­nor port­fo­li­os that will be open to all UZH stu­dents. Based on an agree­ment reached in 2024, the fa­cul­ties are also set­ting tar­get­ed in­cen­tives for plan­ning and im­ple­ment­ing in­ter­dis­ci­pli­nary courses by fa­ci­li­tat­ing the trans­fer of cre­dit for cross-fa­cul­ty teach­ing and aca­de­mic achievements.

Digital tech­no­lo­gies, most no­tab­ly arti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, are chang­ing the way know­ledge is ac­cessed, pro­cessed and im­parted. UZH is sys­te­ma­ti­cal­ly le­ve­rag­ing the po­ten­tial of these tools for stu­dy­ing and teach­ing, while also strength­en­ing in­struc­tors’ and stu­dents’ skills when it comes to the res­pon­sible use of new technologies.

A cen­tral tool for this is the AI Com­pe­tence Hub, which UZH launched in 2025 in col­la­bo­ra­tion with ETH Zurich. As part of UZH.ai, It pro­motes ex­change around the tech­no­lo­gi­cal, aca­de­mic and so­cial issues re­lated to arti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, and offers prac­ti­cal orien­ta­tion for teach­ing. For­mats such as the AI in Teach­ing Forum, in which around 100 people took part, as well as a new­ly de­ve­loped AI com­pe­tence frame­work, sup­port in­struc­tors in im­ple­ment­ing the use of AI in di­dac­ti­cal­ly meaning­ful ways. In ad­di­tion, stu­dents are trained to act as AI coaches to sup­port teach­ing staff.

Mean­while, UZH is ex­pand­ing and en­hanc­ing its di­gi­tal ser­vices to make it easier for stu­dents to or­ga­nize their stu­dies. The AI Buddy, which has been used in the Fa­cul­ty of Busi­ness, Eco­no­mics and In­for­ma­tics for its Ba­che­lor’s de­gree pro­grams since 2025, ans­wers ques­tions about course se­lec­tion, exams and cam­pus life. It is being con­ti­nu­ous­ly re­fined with the help of stu­dents and has been avail­able to all stu­dents from the fa­cul­ty since Feb­ruary 2026 – with a gra­dual­ly ex­pand­ing range of func­tions for per­so­na­lized study sup­port. At the same time, the AI Buddy will be slow­ly rolled out to other fa­cul­ties and con­ti­nu­ous­ly in­te­grat­ed into the UZH eco­sys­tem. Other pro­jects in­clude estab­lish­ing a cen­tral in­tra­net for stu­dents and the Next Ge­ne­ra­tion Com­put­ing pro­ject, which takes into account the in­creas­ing de­mand for com­put­ing ca­pa­city in teach­ing. All AI ini­tia­tives of the Uni­ver­sity of Zurich are bundled at UZH.ai. UZH’s di­gi­tal stra­te­gy is the guid­ing prin­ci­ple be­hind these developments.

In 2025, UZH strength­ened its co­oper­ation with­in the Euro­pean uni­ver­sity alli­ance Una Euro­pa, open­ing up new op­por­tu­ni­ties for in­ter­na­tion­al and cross-dis­ci­pl­ina­ry stu­dy for stu­dents. An im­por­tant step was the launch of the Joint Ba­che­lor in Sus­tain­abil­ity (BASUS). In this study pro­gram, which is joint­ly run by eight uni­ver­si­ties, UZH is res­pon­sible for the area of So­cial Sci­ences & Hu­mani­ties. In the Spring Se­mes­ter of 2025, UZH also wel­comed the first co­hort of the Joint Ba­che­lor of Arts in Euro­pean Stu­dies (BAES), in which stu­dents com­plete a major in law at UZH. UZH is also par­ti­ci­pat­ing in the de­ve­lop­ment of a joint Mas­ter’s de­gree pro­gram in the field of cul­tur­al heritage.

Under the um­brel­la of the Una Eu­ro­pa al­li­ance, UZH has also de­ve­loped new forms of study mo­bi­li­ty at the mo­dule level. In 2025, it ini­ti­ated a Eu­rope-wide mo­dule ex­change in the fields of data sci­ence and ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, al­low­ing stu­dents to at­tend vir­tual courses at part­ner uni­ver­si­ties and in­te­grate them into their study pro­grams. The range of courses avail­able is gra­dual­ly be­ing ex­pand­ed to sup­ple­ment the mo­dules fo­cused on com­puter sci­ence with others from dif­fe­rent disciplines.

Una Europa Vir­tual Ex­change (UnaVEx) mo­dules fur­ther con­tri­bute to vir­tual mo­bi­li­ty. These are now re­cog­nized in all Ba­chelor’s de­gree pro­grams of­fered by the Fa­cul­ty of Busi­ness, Eco­no­mics and In­for­ma­tics, and broad­en the pos­si­bi­li­ties of ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­ter­na­tio­nal learn­ing with­out re­quir­ing a phy­si­cal change of location.

UZH’s par­ti­ci­pa­tion in the Una Eu­ropa uni­ver­sity al­li­ance is co-fi­nanced by Mo­ve­tia, the na­tio­nal agen­cy for the pro­mo­tion of ex­change and mo­bi­lity in education.

The Med500+ pro­ject is the res­ponse of UZH and the Can­ton of Zu­rich to the in­creas­ing short­age of phy­si­cians, es­pe­cial­ly those from Switzer­land. Fore­casts pre­dict that by 2040 there will be a short­age of up to 8,700 doc­tors in Switzer­land. To gua­ran­tee con­tin­ued ac­cess to me­di­cal care, the num­ber of pla­ces at the UZH Fa­cul­ty of Me­di­cine is to be in­creased from 430 to 700. This in­crease would make UZH the lar­gest me­di­cal school in Switzer­land, boost­ing Zurich’s sta­tus as a me­di­cal hub.

There are plans to create a learn­ing cen­ter with a si­mu­la­tion cli­nic at a new lo­cation as part of the train­ing pro­gram. The ex­pan­sion is linked to a re­form of the cur­ri­cu­lum. The aim is to in­crease prac­ti­cal re­le­vance in the Ba­che­lor’s study pro­gram and to further in­te­grate fu­ture-re­le­vant topics such as ar­ti­fi­cial in­tel­li­gence, One Health, health eco­no­mics and in­ter­pro­fes­sion­al co­op­er­ation – all while main­tain­ing the cu­rrent high qua­lity of the program.

Ten new pro­fes­sor­ships, around 140 non-pro­fes­so­rial teach­ing po­si­tions and ad­di­tio­nal train­ing fa­ci­li­ties to­tal­ing around 24,000 square me­ters are planned for the ex­pan­sion. The first ex­pand­ed co­hort is planned to start in 2030. The Go­vern­ment Coun­cil is re­quest­ing the Par­lia­ment of the Canton of Zurich to ap­prove a pro­per­ty loan of CHF 25 mil­lion for the de­ve­lop­ment of the project.