Frank Rühli
Professor and dean, Faculty of Medicine
Organization
University of Zurich
About Frank Rühli
Frank Rühli is dean of the Faculty of Medicine and director and chair of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine at the University of Zurich (UZH) in Switzerland. He is also co-head of UZH’s Center for Crisis Competence and holds the Toh Chin Chye Visiting Professorship at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore. He is co-leading the project How Social Status Becomes Biology: Kinship, Health and Inequality in Ancient Egypt.
Rühli was born in Zurich and graduated from the UZH medical school in 1997. During his studies, he co-founded the Swiss Mummy Project. In 1998, he earned his medical doctorate (Dr. med.) and passed the US Medical Licensing Examination. He worked at the University Hospital Zurich before joining the medical school at the University of Adelaide, Australia, where he earned his PhD in 2003. There, he was the recipient of an International Postgraduate Research Scholarship. In 2007, he completed his habilitation at UZH and was appointed professor at UZH in 2012.
Since 2014, Rühli has served as founding director and chair of the Institute of Evolutionary Medicine and is a full professor of evolutionary medicine, holding a dual appointment with the Faculty of Science at UZH. Additionally, he earned an Executive MBA in 2018. He has been dean of the UZH Faculty of Medicine since 2021, with a reappointment in 2025. In 2021, he co-founded the interfaculty UZH Center for Crisis Competence at the UZH Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics. He has held the Toh Chin Chye Visiting Professorship at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore since 2024. Rühli has been honored with multiple visiting and honorary adjunct professorships in Australia, Singapore and elsewhere.
Research focus
Rühli’s primary research interests lie in the emerging field of evolutionary medicine and paleopathology. This includes studying ancient diseases, human adaptation and health through evolutionary perspectives, and the interaction between genetics, environment and disease in past populations, focusing on biomedical and interdisciplinary studies of ancient Egyptian mummies. He investigates skeletal and mummified remains to understand the health, lifestyle and disease patterns of ancient humans, contributing to knowledge about how evolutionary processes affect modern health. His work combines methods from physical anthropology and medicine and also integrates historical perspectives.
Awards and recognition
Rühli has been elected to numerous academic advisory boards and steering committees, and has served as president of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine and Public Health.
‘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
