Full Professor
Department of Paediatrics, Gynaecology and Obstetrics
Head, Division of Development and Growth
Vice-Dean for Postgraduate and Continuing Education & Inter-institutional Projects/Campus Biotech

Petra Hüppi studied medicine and specialised in paediatrics, neonatology and developmental paediatrics in Bern. Interested in the development of the newborn brain, she discovered in 1988 the potential of a new technology: magnetic resonance imaging. She successfully applied it to her research, first during her training in paediatrics and then during a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard Medical School. She thus became a pioneer in neonatal brain imaging. In 1998, she returned to Switzerland, to the HUG, to head the Division of development and growth and, since its opening in 2018, the Child Development Centre where, with her team, she provides multidisciplinary and specialised care for children with developmental disorders.

Her research on  human brain development has been supported by the SNSF and the European Research Council for 20 years. She is an elected member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences and has received several awards - amon which the Leenaards Prize in 2007 and the Cloëtta Prize for Medicine in Switzerland in 2011. She has also been a member of the National Research Council since 2012 and of the SNSF Career Commission. Since 2019, she has been an elected member of the Administrative Council of the University of Zurich. She is also co-founder of the PrimEnfance Foundation in Geneva, which aims to promote the implementation of innovative scientific projects in the field of childhood diseases.

Appointed full professor in the Department of Paediatrics of the Faculty of Medicine in 2003, she has been Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine since July 2019 in charge of post graduate and continuing education and inter-institutional projects, in particular the Biotech Campus.