During the UNIGE Dies academicus 2025 ceremony, the Nessim Habif World Prize 2025 was awarded to Professor Dominique Soldati-Favre, Director of the Department of Microbiology and Molecular Medicine at the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine. The award recognises her leadership, her career and her commitment to the next generation of scientists.

A biochemist trained in Geneva and Zurich, Dominique Soldati-Favre went on to work at prestigious institutions such as Stanford, Heidelberg, Imperial College London and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute before returning to Geneva in 2004. There she led pioneering work on the parasites responsible for malaria and toxoplasmosis, exploring the mechanisms of parasite motility and invasion, which are paving the way for new therapeutic approaches.

Dominique Soldati-Favre is also committed to the next generation of scientists. As Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Medicine for 8 years, she initiated a mentoring programme and a joint doctoral school in life sciences at the Faculty of Medicine and the Faculty of Science. A member of the EMBO and the US National Academy of Sciences, she also chaired the Biology-Medicine Division of the SNSF, helping to shape the Swiss scientific landscape.

The Nessim-Habif World Prize is awarded to an academic figure who has illustrated, through particularly original and in-depth thinking and work, a field of the exact, medical or human sciences. It was awarded for the first time at the Dies academicus in 1963.