wire - news in brief

The Swiss Federal Council already elected him as PSI's new Director last November. Today (1 April), Christian Rüegg took over the helm at the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI in difficult times. The coronavirus pandemic is also a challenge for large organisations and employers like PSI. However, PSI's unique research facilities also offer opportunities for researching the virus and thus finding ways to combat it.

With many of us thrown into an unusual work situation, now's a good moment to think about boundaries, says Gudela Grote.

The administrative investigation into allegations in the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering has shown that no laws were broken, although pressure was exerted on some doctoral students through employment contracts and there were errors in how some employment contracts were drawn up.

EPFL's International Risk Governance Center (IRGC) has published one of the first comprehensive overviews of both the risks posed by deepfakes and the potential responses to them. The study aims to serve as a primer for countering the threat posed by deepfakes. A few weeks ago, French charity Solidarité Sida caused a sensation when it published a fake yet highly realistic video of Donald Trump proclaiming "AIDS is over" as part of an awareness-raising campaign.

As part of its 50th anniversary celebration, EPFL is highlighting his commitment for open and reproducible research through an exceptional Open Science Day, today.

These days, Microsoft officially opens a lab in Zurich dedicated to researching mixed reality technologies and artificial intelligence.

Gabriele Bavota, Assistant Professor at the USI Software Institute (SI), is among the recipients of the latest ERC Starting Grants, the research funds awarded by the European Research Council on a highly competitive basis to the most promising young researchers active in Europe.

Fifteen talented young researchers from ETH Zurich are each to receive an ERC Starting Grant, which is more than for any year previously.

The supervision of doctoral students has long been the subject of intense debate both within and beyond the walls of our university.

Sports scientists from the University of Basel found that providing telephone-based coaching over the phone is an effective method for getting people in Switzerland to adopt a physically active lifestyle. Physical activity is a good way to minimize various health risks - regardless of gender, age and fitness level.

On the whole, employees at the University of Bern are very satisfied or mostly satisfied with their work and, in general, have a high level of commitment. This is according to the results of the 2019 staff survey. One aspect which staff particularly enjoy is the diverse nature of their work. An up-to-date analysis of wage equality also yielded positive results: at the University of Bern, men and woman earn the same amount for work which is of equal value.

The Fabula team at Twitter UK office. Left to right: Michael Bronstein, Fabrizio Frasca, Emanuele Rossi, Davide Eynard, Federico Monti, Damon Mannion (image: Stacey Conti).

April 8, 2019 Guillaume Diss joined the FMI as a new Quantitative Biology group leader on March 1. His research focuses on understanding the mechanisms whereby genetic variation translates into phenotypic variation - for example, in diseases.

Talent retention, careers, monetary incentives, employee autonomy.. can modern day organisations still be managed through hierarchy?

EPFL's smart living lab, located on the Fribourg campus, is at a pivotal moment in its development. Martin Gonzenbach, the lab's new director of operations, tells us why.

This week, eleven EPFL startups are in Las Vegas to tout their technologies at the Consumer Electronics Show, one of the largest events of its kind.

Fuelling the next quantum revolution with the research project HERO An ERC Grant is the most prestigious award for excellent European research projects. A team with three researchers from the ETH Domain had also applied for such a grant. Today, Gabriel Aeppli from the Paul Scherrer Institute PSI, Henrik Rønnow from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne EPFL and Nicola Spaldin from ETH Zurich, together with their colleague Alexander Balatsky from Nordita, Stockholm University, received the contract signed by the EU confirming the extraordinary 14 million euro funding.