About the Summer School

The future of biomedical research will most certainly consist in the integration of molecular biology, bioengineering, and computational biology into healthcare in a coherent and seamless effort to generate new technologies and therapies for patients. PhD and MD-PhD students involved in research oriented towards translational applications will play an essential role not only in increasing knowledge and developing new technologies but also in coordinating highly collaborative and interconnected initiatives.

In this summer school, we will explore a number of topics that we believe will provide a broad overview of the challenges that life science research and its translational opportunities are and will be facing in the next decades. Furthermore, by promoting and encouraging interdisciplinary discussions we hope to emphasize how impelling is the need of collaboration among different fields to make the bridge between research and its application to healthcare.

Risk governance, ethics and regulation – Shaping the future of medicine will require global involvement of population, academics, industry, politics, ethical and regulatory bodies as the use made of the developed technologies will have major impacts on society worldwide.

Biomedical research – As research at the crossroads of engineered nano- and micro-sized systems and biological environments is progressing at an enormous speed, we would like to cover this topic extensively during the summer school.

Bioengineering – Applied technologies, including microfluidics, biomaterials and organ-on-a-chip, as well as fundamental studies, are both of crucial importance in the development of new technologies of biomedical application.

Computational biology – In this section, we want to cover the field at the interface between life sciences and computing uniting scientists working in a broad range of disciplines, including human genomics, medical engineering, systems biology and microbiome.

Application to healthcare – The goal of this section is to directly link research projects carried out in laboratories to the respective clinical applications. To this aim, we plan on inviting clinicians that apply new technologies in their daily clinical practice.

The interface between industry and academia – Switzerland and institutions within the ETH Board have undertaken significant efforts to ensure that science done on campuses of Swiss research and educational institutions has its application in the form of the transfer of technology and the management of innovations. We will invite representatives of Swiss Pharma giants as well as PIs who have transitioned from academia to industry to give talks during our summer school.