Michael Hengartner

Michael O. Hengartner served as President of the University of Zurich (UZH) from 2014 to 2020 and as President of swissuniversities from 2016 to 2020. A dual Swiss-Canadian citizen, he grew up in Québec City and studied biochemistry at Université Laval. In 1994, he obtained his PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working in the laboratory of Nobel laureate H. Robert Horvitz. He subsequently led a research group at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the United States before being appointed Professor at the Institute of Molecular Biology at UZH in 2001. From 2009 to 2014, he served as Dean of UZH’s Faculty of Science. Hengartner also holds an Executive MBA from IMD Lausanne and has received numerous awards for his contributions to research and teaching