External Advisory Board
Susan Gasser, PhD
Susan Gasser, PhD
Susan Gasser studied at the Universities of Chicago (biophysics) and Basel (biochemistry) before a postdoc at the University of Geneva, where she started studying chromosome structure and chromatin organization. As a group leader at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) from 1986 - 2001 she exploited the genetics of budding yeast to probe the function of long range chromatin organization. In 2001, she returned to the University of Geneva as Professor, and then served from 2004 – 2019, as the Director of the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel. Her research team pursued epigenetic inheritance and heterochromatin in Basel, until 2021. She is now professor invité at the University of Lausanne and Director of the ISREC Foundation (www.isrec.ch). Susan Gasser was elected to the Académie de France, Leopoldina, EMBO, AAAS, the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, and the US National Academy of Science. She received the National Latsis Prize, Otto Naegeli Award, the INSERM International Prize, the FEBS | EMBO Women in Science Award in 2012, the Weizmann Institute Women in Science award in 2013, and honorary doctorates from four universities. She participates in numerous review boards and advisory committees in Switzerland, across Europe and in Japan, and serves on the governing board of the ETH Domain (ETH Rat). She was vice Chairperson and then Chair of the EMBO Council, member of the EC president’s Science Council, and is now on the EMBL Council. Susan chairs the Helmholtz Health Strategic Advisory Board and is on the board of UCB SA, a pharma company based in Brussels. She helps foster translational cancer research at the Agora, through targeted grant funding, and has helped the ETH Board and the Swiss Science Council design and implement a uniform patient data management system for hospitals and clinical trial organizations in Switzerland. The integration of complex data sources into patient diagnostics and therapy evaluation is at the center of these efforts.
Dr. Eli van Allen
Dr. Eli van Allen
Dr. Eliezer (Eli) Van Allen is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Chief of the Division of Population Sciences at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an Institute Member at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and a Member Researcher in The Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. As both a medical oncologist and computational biologist, he develops algorithms to dissect high-dimensional data directly from cancer patients and uses these insights to address major open questions in the field. Dr. Van Allen’s research has led to significant advances in understanding the molecular origins of cancer, using artificial intelligence to discover novel resistance mechanisms to cancer therapies, and defining how genomics can guide clinical decision-making. Through these initiatives, he created the field of clinical computational oncology to advance and enable precision cancer medicine worldwide. Originally from Los Angeles, CA, he studied Symbolic Systems at Stanford University, obtained his M.D. from UCLA, and completed a residency in internal medicine at UCSF before coming to Boston and completing a medical oncology fellowship at the Dana-Farber/Partners Cancer Care program.
Prof. em. Dr. Markus Rudin
Prof. em. Dr. Markus Rudin
Prof. em. Dr. Markus Rudin Markus Rudin (born 1953) received his PhD in 1981 at the Laboratory for Physical Chemistry of the ETHZ, in the field of electron spin resonance / electron-nuclear double resonance, followed by a post-doctorate in the same area. From 1983 to 2005 he worked at the Novartis Institutes for Biomedical Research Basel, (formerly as Sandoz AG), as head of the biomedical imaging group, and later became Unit Head of Analytical and Imaging Science Unit within Discovery Technologies. From 2005 to 2018, he was at the University of Zürich and ETH Zürich as full professor for Molecular Imaging and Functional Pharmacology (retirement 2018). From 2005 to 2013, he was a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Since 2020, he has been the founding director of The LOOP Zurich Center for Precision Medicine.