Media releases 2023

The World Health Organization (WHO) has appointed the Biosafety Center of the Institute for Infectious Diseases at the University of Bern as a Collaborating Center. The Biosafety Center will support the WHO with advice, training and the development of guidelines and instructions. It is the only WHO Biosafety Collaborating Center in the world to be based at a university.

Work on the report on the administrative investigation of the Institute for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Societies (ISNO) is well advanced. Due to legal requirements, the so-called fair hearing on the report will now be granted. The University of Bern expects to provide information on the final report at the end of January.

Eleven award-winning research projects: of the 67 projects in this year's call for "Starting Grants" from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), eleven are being supported from Bern. The funding amount for the Bernese researchers is around 19 million Swiss francs in total.

An international collaboration between astronomers using the CHEOPS and TESS space satellites, including NCCR PlanetS members from the University of Bern and the University of Geneva, have found a key new system of six transiting planets orbiting a bright star in a harmonic rhythm. This rare property enabled the team to determine the planetary orbits which initially appeared as an unsolvable riddle.

Following the success of the Bern solar wind sail on the Apollo Moon missions of the U.S. space agency NASA in the 1960s, the Physics Institute at the University of Bern is to return to the Moon as early as 2027 with the LIMS mass spectrometer as part of the NASA Commercial Lunar Payoad Services (CLPS) initiative.

Unlike their relatives, individuals of the poison frog Allobates femoralis are not poisonous but are captivating due to their different behavioral profiles: They successfully reproduce with different strategies depending on whether they are bold, aggressive or explorative. In addition, certain character traits are already present in this species at the tadpole stage. This is shown in two recently published studies by the University of Bern.

The canton of Bern wants to establish itself as a leading international medical location by 2030. To achieve this, the Insel Group, the University of Bern, and the technology innovation center, CSEM, will combine their exceptional medical expertise and work together on research and development projects. Their goal is to strengthen the competitiveness of local industrial businesses and start-ups.

An international group of researchers with participation from the University of Bern is using new concepts to search for efficient and durable electrocatalysts for the energy transition. They are being funded by the European Research Council (ERC) with 10 million euros.

Treatment of the chronic inflammatory bowel disease ulcerative colitis often produces unsatisfactory results. Researchers at the University of Bern have now developed a lipid gel that is administered directly to the inflamed part of the intestine, where it remains and releases its active substance evenly. This could result in a new, targeted therapy approach with fewer side effects.

To ensure the quality of teaching, research, and service and to restore the credibility of ISNO, the University of Bern has taken various measures. The contract of the lecturer who published the unacceptable X-postings will be terminated without notice. In addition, an administrative investigation of the entire institute has been initiated. During this investigation, the Institute Co-Director Serena Tolino will be relieved of her duties.

To assess biodiversity goals, reports are typically based on entire countries. Researchers from the Global Mountain Biodiversity Assessment at the University of Bern and the University of Lausanne challenge this country-level analysis regarding conservation efforts for mountain biodiversity. They emphasize that significant sub-national differences are being overlooked and highlight the need for cross-country conservation initiatives.

In just 16,000 years, more than cichlid 500 species, distributed throughout the entire food web, have evolved in Lake Victoria. This explosion of biodiversity was made possible by repeated cycles of fusion and diversification in evolutionary lineages, as researchers from Eawag and the University of Bern have described in the “Science” and “Nature” journals. The results underscore that it is not just species that need protection, but entire “species swarms”.

Der mit 1 Million Schweizer Franken dotierte Dr. Josef Steiner Krebsforschungspreis 2023, der ursprünglich als «Nobelpreis für Krebsforschung» bezeichnet wurde, geht an Dr. Inigo Martincorena vom Wellcome Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK, für seine Forschung zur Entstehung von Krebs. Der Preis wird am Freitag, 6. Oktober 2023 an der Universität Bern verliehen.

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has awarded funding to three projects led by the University of Bern as part of the SPIRIT program, promoting cross-border and collaborative research endeavors. These research initiatives delve into topics concerning potentially habitable exoplanets, female entrepreneurship in Switzerland and Colombia, and the combined use of medication and psychotherapy for depression treatment in Zimbabwe.

Blood poisoning caused by a fungal infection is a severe, life-threatening condition. Researchers at the University of Bern have now discovered a mechanism that helps a yeast fungus to spread more easily within the body. The immune system, of all things, plays a major role in this process. These findings could open up new therapeutic avenues for blood poisoning caused by yeast, but also for other invasive fungal infections.

With methods of so-called geoengineering, the climate could theoretically be artificially influenced and cooled. Bernese researchers have now investigated whether it would be possible to prevent the melting of the West Antarctic ice sheet by artificially "dimming the sun". The results show that artificial influence does not work without decarbonization and entails high risks.

Maize roots secrete certain chemicals that affect the quality of soil. In some fields, this effect increases yields of wheat planted subsequent to maize in the same soil by more than 4%. This was proven by researchers from the University of Bern. While the findings from several field experiments show that these effects are highly variable, in the long term they may yet help to make the cultivation of grains more sustainable, without the need for additional fertilizers or pesticides.

Climate change is intensifying heat, leading to a significant increase in heat-related health problems. About 60 percent of the more than 600 heat-related deaths in the summer of 2022 in Switzerland can be attributed to human-induced global warming. This is shown by a study led by the University of Bern.

Professor Thomas Feurer, the Director of the University of Bern’s Institute of Applied Physics, was appointed Head of the European XFEL Management Board. He takes up his new position on 1 January 2024. This international facility began operations in Schenefeld bei Hamburg in 2017. It generates ultrashort X-ray flashes that enable advanced research to be conducted in a wide range of different fields.

With the help of the CHEOPS space telescope an international team of European astronomers managed to clearly identify the existence of four new exoplanets. The four mini-Neptunes are smaller and cooler, and more difficult to find than the so-called Hot Jupiter exoplanets which have been found in abundance. Two of the four resulting papers are led by researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Geneva who are also members of the National Centre of Competence in Research (NCCR) PlanetS.

Researchers from the University of Bern, Inselspital, University Hospital Bern, and the University of Connecticut have made a significant breakthrough in the fight against cancer. They identified a previously unknown weak point of prostate cancer cells. This could also lead to entirely new therapeutic approaches for other types of cancer.

The Cantonal Government has elected Virginia Richter as the new Rector of the University of Bern. She will succeed Christian Leumann as of August 1st, 2024. The full professor of English Literature has been a member of the University Executive Board as Vice-Rector for Development since 2021.

Diuretic drugs from the thiazide group have been used for 60 years to treat high blood pressure. But they also increase the risk of developing diabetes. Researchers at the University of Bern and Inselspital have now pinpointed the cause of this side effect and in the process also gained new insights into the development of diabetes.

2022 was marked by historic upheaval for Europe as a whole. In its new Annual Report, the University of Bern shows its contributions to solving problem areas which could well be exacerbated by global conflict situations and pandemics in the coming years.

A study by the University of Bern concludes that at the end of the last ice age there was not, as previously assumed, a complete collapse of the ocean circulation in the Atlantic, which provide a mild climate in Europe. This realization has implications for the discussion on climate tipping points.

The European Space Agency ESA’s Juice space mission is scheduled to start its journey to Jupiter on April 13, 2023. Once arrived, one of the goals of Juice is to search for traces of life on three of Jupiter’s icy moons. The University of Bern is contributing the NIM mass spectrometer to the mission and is involved in two other instruments: the SWI Sub-millimeter Wave Instrument and the GALA Laser Altimeter.

A team including physicists of the University of Bern has for the first time detected subatomic particles called neutrinos created by a particle collider, namely at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The discovery promises to deepen scientists’ understanding of the nature of neutrinos, which are among the most abundant particles in the universe and key to the solution of the question why there is more matter than antimatter.

The highly contagious canine distemper virus is dangerous to dogs and wild life animals. It is also closely related to the equally highly contagious measles virus. Researchers at the University of Bern and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences have now for the first time determined the structure of the canine distemper virus "docking protein" and depicted it at molecular level. This lays the ground to develop novel therapies for a better management of the diseases induced by CDV and related viruses, such as the measles virus.

After more than three years in orbit, the mission of the CHEOPS space telescope has just been extended. Led by the University of Bern in collaboration with the University of Geneva, CHEOPS is a joint mission of the European Space Agency (ESA) and Switzerland. On March 7th, ESA’s Science Programme Committee has confirmed its continued operations to 2026 and an indicative extension to 2029, contingent upon ongoing commitments from national contributors and partners. Since its launch in December 2019, the satellite’s extremely precise measurements have contributed to several key discoveries in the field of exoplanets. The extension will make it possible to study these fascinating worlds around other stars in even more detail.

In group-living species, either the male or female offspring disperse from their natal territory at some stage. Researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna, unveiled in African cichlids which factors determine territory inheritance and emigration.

Geckos can use their tongue to differentiate their own odor from that of other members of their species, as researchers from the University of Bern have shown in a new experimental study. The findings show that geckos are able to communicate socially, meaning that they are more intelligent than was previously assumed.

Ice cores are a unique climate archive. Thanks to a new method developed by researchers at the University of Bern and Empa, greenhouse gas concentrations in 1.5 million year old ice can be measured even more accurately. The EU project “Beyond EPICA” with the participation of the University of Bern aims to recover such old ice in Antarctica.

Astronomers have long been aware that planetary systems are not necessarily structured like our solar system. Researchers from the Universities of Bern and Geneva, as well as from the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS, have now shown for the first time that there are in fact four types of planetary systems.

In certain Lake Tanganyika cichlids breeding in empty snail shells, there are two extreme sizes of males: giants and dwarfs. Researchers from the University of Bern and the University of Graz have analysed the genomes of these fish and found out how the peculiar sizes of males and females evolved in conjunction with the genetic sex determination mechanism.

The Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) awards four scientists from the University of Bern an SNSF Consolidator Grant 2022 each. The funded research projects address wildfire resilience in Europe, religious interactions in the early Middle Ages, the search for physics beyond the standard model, and the intercontinental transfer of Christian body relics.

Interstellare Molekülwolken gelten als Wiegen von Planetensystemen. Ein internationales Forschungsteam unter Beteiligung des Center for Space and Habitability (CSH) der Universität Bern und des Nationalen Forschungsschwerpunkt (NFS) PlanetS entdeckt mithilfe des James-Webb-Weltraumteleskops das tiefst gelegene und kälteste Eis, das je in einer solchen Molekülwolke nachgewiesen wurde. Der Fund ermöglicht der Astronomie neue Einblicke in die eisigen Bestandteile, die im Verlauf der Zeit in Planeten eingebaut werden und dort letztlich die Grundlage für Leben bilden könnten.