Scientific Advisory Board
The Mission
The Advisory Board assists the Foundation Board for the educational questions linked with the activities of the Foundation. It makes recommendations to the Executive Committee concerning the allocation of funds and provides the general follow-up of the educational work.
The members
Amos Bairoch
PhD, Professor of Bioinformatics UNIGE, Scientific Advisory Board
Biosketch
Amos Bairoch is a Swiss bioinformatician and Professor of Bioinformatics at the Department of Human Protein Sciences of the University of Geneva where he leads the CALIPHO group at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (SIB) combining bioinformatics, curation, and experimental efforts to functionally characterize human proteins.
Contact:
email:amos.bairoch@sib.swiss
Phone: +41 22 379 58 60
Address: UNIGE Medial School
Dr. Pierre Cosson
Ph.D
Biosketch
Dr. Pierre Cosson obtained a Ph.D in Dr. J. Davoust´s laboratory, where he was working on the “Mechanisms of formation of intracellular transport vesicles”.
1990 he joined as an EMBO a post-doctoral fellow the laboratory of Dr. R. Klausner’s laboratory at the National Institute of Health, Washington, USA working on the “Transmembrane determinants for assembly and intracellular transport”.
In 1992 he moved as a Member to the Basel Institute for Immunology (Basel, Switzerland) still working the « Mechanisms of membrane sorting in the secretory pathway ». 1997 he moved as a Group leader to the University of Geneva where he was appointed in 2007 Full professor working on « Phagocytosis and host-pathogen interactions”.
He has created and runs the new Bachelor of Biomedical Science. He also created the recombinant antibody project, which provides animal-free high-quality antibodies to the scientific community.
Most recently he opened the ABCD database listing all available recombinant antibodies (>10’000 entries) and created a new open-access scientific journal (Antibody Reports) dedicated to the characterization of recombinant antibodies.
Marie-Christine Broillet
Senior Lecturer University of Lausanne, Scientific Advisory Board
Biosketch
Marie-Christine Broillet received her PhD in 1993 from the University of Lausanne for research on renal K channels performed with Prof. Jean-Daniel Horisberger. In 1998, after a post-doctoral training with Prof. Stuart Firestein at Yale and Columbia University (New York) where she studied olfactory cyclic nucleotide-gated channels, she joined the Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology of the UNIL to create and lead her own research group working on ion channels and membrane receptors in olfactory neurons. She now focuses her scientific interests on the chemical danger signals present in the environment, their sensory detection by the nose, their neuronal pathways of activation and their social communication leading to specific behaviors fundamental for survival. In parallel, she is very involved in teaching to different audiences with different modalities. She is the Head of the Master of Science in Medical Biology (MSc BM) of the UNIL as well as the responsible of the training of laboratory technicians by her chairmanship position at the “Association vaudoise pour les métiers de laboratoire” (AVML).
Jozsef Zoltan Kiss
MD. Em. Prof. UNIGE, Neurosciences, Scientific Advisory Board
Biosketch
Jozsef Zoltan KISS obtained his M.D degree at the Semmelweis University Medical School, Budapest, Hungary in 1979. He was a research associate at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary from 1979 to1981, a Research associate at the Department of Anatomy, University of Iowa, College of Medicine, Iowa City, USA from 1981 to 1982, a Visiting associate in the Laboratory of Cell Biology, NIH, Bethesda, MD, USA from 1983 to1984, a Research associate at the Institute of Experimental Medicine, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary from 1985 to 1986, a Visiting scientist, Rudolf Magnus Institute, University of Utrecht, Utrecht, The Netherlands in 1986.
In 1986, he joined the University of Geneva Medical School, first as a junior faculty member and in 2007 as a full professor, at the Department of Fundamental Neuroscience. He retired in 2018.
He was and still is interested in developmental mechanisms that are critical for neuronal migration and circuit formation in the cerebral cortex as well as the molecular control of neural progenitor migration with the aim to direct these cells to sites of injury to achieve structural repair.
Contact:
e-mail:Jozsef.Kiss@unige.ch
Phone:+41 22 379 52 02
Address:UNIGE Medical School
Ivana Knezevic
MD PhD, WHO Geneva, Titular Professor UNIL, Scientific Advisory Board
Biosketch
Dr. Knezevic has 19 years of professional experience in standardization and regulation of biologicals. In 2000, Dr Knezevic joined WHO Biological Standardization Programme and since then her activities have been devoted to the standardization and evaluation of biologicals at the global level. Since 2006, she has been leading standardization of vaccines and some biological therapeutics. Dr Knezevic led development of WHO regulatory guidelines on various aspects of vaccine evaluation as well as the recommendations for production, control and evaluation of selected vaccines, published in WHO Technical Report Series. In the area of biotherapeutics, she coordinated development of the WHO Guidelines on evaluation of similar biotherapeutic products (SBPs) and has initiated a series of workshops to facilitate implementation of guiding principles into regulatory and manufacturers’ practice. Dr Knezevic is also the author of several publications that made broad audience aware of WHO initiative in the development, establishment and implementation of standards for vaccines and some other biological products. Dr. Knezevic is Specialist in Medical Microbiology and Parasitology. She received her MD from the University of Novi Sad, her MSc in Medicine (Microbiology) and PhD in Medicine (Virology) from the University of Belgrade, Republic of Serbia. Presently she is Professor at the Faculty of Biology and Medicine of the Lausanne University.
Contact:
e-mail:knezevici@who.int
Phone: +41 22 791 3136
Address: WHO, Avenue Appia 20, 1211 Geneva 27
Li Long
Manager of software in biomedical research. Scientific Advisory Board
Biosketch
Li Long graduated in computer science from Jinan University and Pennsylvania State University. She worked on simulation software that’s used in design, analysis, real-time control and operator training on transmission pipelines in oil and gas industry. Later she worked on IT management software that monitors, controls and predicts IT services/operations/automation
She has worked on all major stages of software development process, from software design, development, quality control to life cycle management, using major hardware/software platforms, many programming languages, development tools, operating environments/resources.
In HSeT, she’s been working on migrating biomedical course contents to more modern Learning Management System (LMS) and Content Management System (CMS).
William Pralong
MD, PhD, Emeritus Professor, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Biosketch
Trained as an MD, William F. Pralong did his Thesis in Transport Phenomena at the Dpt of Pharmacology, School of Medicine in Geneva. He specialized then in Diabetes and Pancreas Physiology. He moved to industry to work on artificial pancreas and then conducted clinical trials in genetherapy for EPO delivery at the Dept of Experimental Surgery with Patrick Aebischer at the CHUV, Lausanne. He joined EPFL in 2000 with EPFL’s President, Patrick Aebischer to set up the curriculum in Life Sciences and Technology and in Bioengineering at the School of Life Sciences. Presently William Pralong is Deputy to the Provost for MQS at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology.
Bernard Rossier
MD Em.Prof.UNIL HSeT founding member, Scientific Advisory Board