Due to its high level standards in research and its many disciplines, the UNIGE is ranked among the best three generalist French-speaker universities and among the 150 best universities in 20’000 worldwide universities. Research projects cover more than one hundred topics, from exact sciences, natural and medical sciences to social sciences and humanities. Every year this leads to fruitful results such as 3'300 publications.
As a result of its history and its strategic choices, the UNIGE made possible a diversity of research areas to emerge in which the institution excels. Therefore, the UNIGE research strengths are life sciences (genetics, molecular and chemical biology, bioinformatics), physics and chemistry, astrophysics and also some specific fields in social sciences and humanities.
At a national level, the UNIGE is one of the Swiss leaders for hosting National Centres of Competence in Research (
NCCR). Main instrument of the Swiss National Science Foundation, these NCCRs foster scientific networks at an international level of excellence from fundamental research to application. Each NCCR is under the directorship of a research institution (Leading house) which allows research groups based at the home institution to network with other teams working throughout Switzerland. The UNIGE is the leading house of four NCCRs: NCCR
Frontiers in Genetics, NCCR
MaNEP, NCCR
Affective Sciences, and NCCR
Chemical Biology. More over the UNIGE is the co-leading house of two NCCRs in collaboration with EPFL and the University of Lausanne : NCCR
LIVES – Overcoming vulnerability, NCCR
The synaptic bases of mental disease.
Open to the world the UNIGE
leads research projects in collaboration with almost 100 countries.
At a European level the UNIGE actively participates in many European
research programmes, particularly to the 7th
Framework Programme of Research and Development with
13 projects coordinated by the UNIGE and more than 150
participations to projects in all scientific disciplines. The UNIGE is also
involved in more than 50 networks and research projects
COST and is one of the
first swiss institution of higher education regarding the number of participations to the
SCOPES
program.
This scientific excellence and global outreach are related to our talented researchers. We have no less than 3950 researchers (including 595 professors) of 113 nationalities who work in 8 different faculties. Their scientific performance is also expressed by the number and the amount of subsidies obtained on a very competitive basis from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the European Commission. The UNIGE is one of the best swiss institution of higher education for the allocation of these funding.
UNIGE
researchers are granted numerous prizes and distinctions each year. These last
few years, 18 researchers from UNIGE were granted a European Research Council
Grant, which is a prestigious grant given to top researchers. Recently
three professors from UNIGE received very high distinctions. Professor Stanislav Smirnov was granted the Fields Medal which is considered as the equivalent of
the Nobel Prize in mathematics, Professor Michel Mayor obtained the Vicktor Ambartsumian International
Prize, one of the most important distinctions in the field of astrophysics,
and Professor Antoine Bailly received the Vautrin Lud International Geography Prize, the highest award that can be gained in the field of geography. These performances show the ability of UNIGE to attract talented researchers.
Due to the high
level of the research, many Swiss and international companies are keen to collaborate with UNIGE researchers (see Technology Transfer Office).
