Dies academicus Dies academicus

Vera Michalski-Hoffmann studied at the Geneva Graduate Institute. In 1987, she co-founded Éditions Noir sur Blanc with Jan Michalski, with the aim of building bridges between the cultures and peoples of Europe by publishing authors writing in French and Polish. In 2004, she created the Jan Michalski Foundation for Writing and Literature in Montricher, at the foot of the Swiss Jura mountains, in tribute to her husband, who had died two years earlier. While perpetuating the memory of their shared commitment to writing, the Foundation's mission is to support literary creation and encourage reading through the organisation of exhibitions and cultural events to promote dialogue between artists and writers, providing the public with access to a large multilingual library, awarding an annual prize for world literature, granting financial support and hosting writers in residence. Designed as a small town sheltered by a canopy in the heart of nature, the Foundation offers a unique meeting place with a global outlook.

The Department of Astronomy at the University of Geneva, also known as the Geneva Observatory, is a major actor in the development and operation of high-precision spectrographs for astrophysics research, particularly in the field of exoplanets.
In 2017, the world's most accurate astronomical spectrograph, ESPRESSO, left the Observatory's clean room before being installed on the VLT, Europe's largest telescopes. In 2023, NIRPS, another precision spectrograph, this time operating in the infrared, was put into service. This joined HARPS, with which the Geneva Observatory had begun the hunt for ‘super-Earths’ in 2003, setting an example for all future spectrographs.
Swiss excellence in this field is the result of a long tradition of building cutting-edge instruments, based on the constant development of new technologies and paving the way for numerous scientific discoveries that would otherwise be inaccessible. This institutional culture, rooted in the origins of the Geneva Observatory, was reinforced with the construction of the first spectrographs that led to the discovery of the first exoplanet by Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz in 1995, an achievement awarded by the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2019.
Today, scientists at the University of Geneva are already working on the next generation of instruments, such as RISTRETTO, which will combine high-resolution spectroscopy with sufficient angular resolution to observe the reflected light from Proxima b, the exoplanet closest to Earth, and ANDES, the future spectrograph for the giant 39-metre diameter telescope, capable of observing the atmospheres of small exoplanets in unprecedented detail.

Dominique Soldati-Favre is a full professor at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Geneva, where she heads the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Medicine. Her academic career began with studies in biochemistry, culminating in a PhD in molecular biology from the University of Zurich in 1990. She then completed postdoctoral training at Stanford University before serving as group leader in Heidelberg and senior lecturer at Imperial College London.
A member of the European Molecular Biology Organisation (EMBO), she received the Alice and C.C. Wang Award in 2019 for her major contributions to the field of parasitology. She was recently elected to the American Academy of Sciences. 
Her research focuses primarily on elucidating the biology of apicomplexan parasites, with a particular emphasis on the molecular mechanisms underlying gliding motility and host cell invasion. In addition to her pioneering work in these areas, her team is also exploring the metabolic requirements and capabilities of apicomplexans, thereby broadening the scope of their investigations.

Quentin Béran holds a PhD in the history of architecture. After studying art history at the University of Geneva, he completed a doctoral thesis entitled Vers une dissolution de l’espace circonscrit dans l’œuvre de Frank Lloyd Wright: le cas des maisons-ateliers, which was recently published by MétisPresses. During his PhD studies, he was also an invited researcher at Columbia University in New York. In his research, he enriches his architectural analysis with a sociological discourse, systematically placing human beings at the heart of his concerns. He thus studies architecture with a phenomenological approach in order to grasp the tangible repercussions of buildings on their users. He is currently undertaking postdoctoral research on the issue of social housing in Geneva between the two world wars through the figure of Arnold Hoechel, a pioneer of the garden city movement in French-speaking Switzerland.

An elite athlete, Roman Mityukov obtained a Bachelor's degree in law in 2024 from the Faculty of Law at UNIGE, where he is currently  enrolled in the Master's degree program in economic law.

A bronze medallist at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, he has been swimming since he was a child. His favourite discipline is backstroke, a specialisation in which he excels and has won numerous medals. He is a multiple Swiss champion and holds several national records, notably in the 100m and 200m backstroke. He also has world and European medals to his name. In 2025, he confirmed his status at the highest level by winning gold in the 50m backstroke and silver in the 100m freestyle at the Swiss Championships. He also finished 7th in the 200m backstroke world final in Singapore, adding another international experience to his list of achievements.