Michael Hengartner
President of the ETH Board
Organization
ETH Zurich
About Michael Hengartner
Michael Hengartner is a member of the NOMIS Honorary Council and the President of the ETH Board and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the ETH Domain. The Swiss-Canadian citizen, born in St. Gallen, Switzerland, grew up in Québec City, Canada, and studied biochemistry at the Université Laval. After his PhD studies at MIT with Nobel laureate H. R. Horvitz, he led for seven years a research group at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the USA. In 2001, he became the first occupant of the Ernst Hadorn Endowed Chair for molecular biology at the University of Zurich (UZH). From 2009 to 2014, he was dean of the Faculty of Science, and from 2014 to 2020 president of UZH. From 2016 to 2020, he served as president of swissuniversities, the Swiss Rectors’ Conference.
Michael Hengartner completed an Executive MBA at IMD Lausanne and has been honoured with numerous awards for his ground-breaking research on the molecular basis of apoptosis, including the Swiss National Latsis Prize in 2006. In 2010, he received the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching from the University of Zurich. Michael Hengartner was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Sorbonne University in 2016. The UZH rector received the award in recognition of his research in molecular biology and his services to society.
