Career News
Gabriele Rippl and Anna Fontcuberta i Morral to join the SNSF National Research Council Presiding Board
Two AcademiaNet members have been elected to lead specialised bodies of the Swiss National Science Foundation’s National Research Council and join its Presiding Board. The National Research Council evaluates and selects research proposals for funding, and as a whole is made up of a maximum of 100 highly distinguished researchers, mainly based at Swiss research institutions. The Presiding Board supervises this work and drafts science policy recommendations to the Foundation Council, which is in charge of funding strategy.
Prof. Gabriele Rippl is Chair of Literatures in English and North American Studies at the University of Bern, as well as Vice Dean of their Faculty of Humanities. She is a specialist of early modern, nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature, and she has published extensively on literary theory, gender studies, postcolonial studies and classical antiquity in Anglophone literatures, among many other subjects. She becomes president of the National Research Council’s Specialised Committee Careers and will take over her place at the Presiding Board from Fritz Schlunegger.
Prof. Fontcuberta i Morral is a physicist and material scientist based at EPFL in Lausanne. Her work is focussed on the engineering of semiconductor nanostructures, especially nanowires, which have new and unusual physical and chemical properties. She becomes president of the Specialised Committee International Cooperation and takes over from fellow AcademiaNet member Katharina Michaelowa at the Presiding Board.
The SNSF is mandated by the Swiss Federal Government for the purposes of supporting scientific research in Switzerland. The National Research Council is one of three main bodies within the SNSF, along with the Foundation Council and the Administrative Offices. The Foundation Council elects the members of the National Research Council. (© AcademiaNet)