Patrick Eppenberger
Co-head of Evolutionary Pathophysiology and Mummy Studies
Organization
University of Zurich
About Patrick Eppenberger
Patrick Eppenberger is co-head of the Evolutionary Pathophysiology and Mummy Studies group at the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine, University of Zurich (UZH), in Switzerland. He is co-leading the project How Social Status Becomes Biology: Kinship, Health and Inequality in Ancient Egypt.
Born in Hong Kong, Eppenberger first trained as an industrial designer at the Zurich University of the Arts, graduating in 2002, before studying medicine at the University of Zurich, where he obtained his medical degree in 2011 and his doctorate in 2012. After residency rotations in diagnostic radiology, forensic medicine and orthopedic surgery in Zurich, he joined the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine as a research fellow in 2016 and led its paleopathology and mummy studies group as deputy and acting head from 2019 to 2023. He received his habilitation from the UZH Faculty of Medicine in 2023 for work on adapting medical imaging to the diagnostic evaluation of ancient human remains and completed an Executive MBA at UZH in 2024.
Eppenberger is co-principal investigator of a Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) Agora grant on public engagement in mummy research and co-principal investigator of an SNSF Weave/Lead Agency project on PIEZO1 variants. He holds a European patent for a portable rail system that turns conventional X-ray equipment into a CT scanner for use in the field and in museum collections. He serves on the editorial board of European Radiology Experimental.
Research focus
Eppenberger studies how living conditions, social environments and disease have shaped human health across long stretches of the past, using ancient human remains as a direct biological archive. His research integrates nondestructive biomedical imaging, osteological analysis and molecular–omics approaches with experimental methods and computational modeling. Working across scales — from skeletal and dental tissues to cellular mechanisms and genetic variation, including studies of red blood cell mechanobiology — he investigates how evolutionary history continues to shape human health and disease today.
Awards and recognition
For his earlier work as a designer, Eppenberger received the Red Dot Design Award and an iF Product Design Award in 2010 and was a co-recipient of the Design Prize Switzerland in 2009.
‘s projects
How Social Status Becomes Biology
Human activities are causing an alarming decline in biodiversity, threatening the vital natural resources such as fertile soil, clean water and climate stability we depend on. While scientists have a strong understanding of how nature operates at local and planetary levels, we lack a general theory for how ecological changes at the mesoscale — the regional networks that connect the two — add up to impact the stability of the biosphere as a whole. How do ecosystems connected across landscapes, seascapes and regions collectively buffer — or amplify — environmental change? Understanding this is essential to preserving the natural systems that support all life.
NOMIS researchers
Project period
2026 – 2029
