University Of Geneva Research Articles

The Empty Office: protocol for sequential mixed-method study on the impact of telework activities on social relations and well-being

IntroductionTeleworking is one of the most significant legacies of the pandemic. Great attention is now being paid to its effects on workers’ health. One of the arguments that emerged on...

Gender gap in faculty promotion.

We examine the gender gap in faculty promotion at the University of Geneva. After building a new measure of research quality that has no gender bias (i.e. men and women have, on average, the same level of research quality after we control for disciplines), we find that conditional on research quality, discipline and place where the PhD was obtained, women are 11 percent less likely to get promoted. The gender gap is almost three times larger for promotion from assistant to associate professor, suggesting that the mechanism at play is stronger for junior faculty. The gender gap is explained by the fact that an equal increase in research quality leads to a smaller increase in women's probability of promotion.

Chatbots in medicine: certification process and applied use case.

Chatbots are computer programs designed to engage in natural language conversations in an easy and understandable way. Their use has been accelerated recently with the advent of large language models. However, their application in medicine and healthcare has been limited due to concerns over data privacy, the risk of providing medical diagnoses, and ensuring regulatory and legal compliance. Medicine and healthcare could benefit from chatbots if their scope is carefully defined and if they are used appropriately and monitored long-term. The confIAnce chatbot, developed at the Geneva University Hospitals and the University of Geneva, is an informational tool aimed at providing simplified information to the general public about primary care and chronic diseases. In this paper, we describe the certification and regulatory aspects applicable to chatbots in healthcare, particularly in primary care medicine. We use the confIAnce chatbot as a case study to explore the definition and classification of a medical device and its application to chatbots, considering the applicable Swiss regulations and the European Union AI Act. Chatbots can be classified anywhere from non-medical devices (informational tools that do not handle patient data or provide recommendations for treatment or diagnosis) to Class III medical devices (high-risk tools capable of predicting potentially fatal events and enabling a pre-emptive medical intervention). Key considerations in the definition and certification process include defining the chatbot's scope, ensuring compliance with regulations, maintaining security and safety, and continuously evaluating performance, risks, and utility. A lexicon of relevant terms related to artificial intelligence in healthcare, medical devices, and regulatory frameworks is also presented in this paper. Chatbots hold potential for both patients and healthcare professionals, provided that their scope of practice is clearly defined, and that they comply with regulatory requirements. This review aims to provide transparency by outlining the steps required for certification and regulatory compliance, making it valuable for healthcare professionals, scientists, developers, and patients.

Abstracts of the International Science of Aphasia Conference, University of Geneva, September 2024

Abstracts of the International Science of Aphasia Conference, University of Geneva, September 2024

Cell scientist to watch – Virginie Hamel

ABSTRACT Virginie Hamel is a co-Group Leader and Senior Lecturer in the Department of Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) in Switzerland. She completed her PhD with Iain Mattaj at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, studying nuclear envelope re-assembly. To gain experience with bioimaging, she joined Pierre Gönczy's laboratory at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in Lausanne as a postdoc and later became a Staff Scientist. There, she began researching centriole assembly, combining biochemical approaches and super-resolution microscopy with expertise in structural biology from her partner in the lab and in life, Paul Guichard. In 2015, Virginie and Paul started their joint Centriolar Architecture lab at UNIGE, focusing on the structural cell biology of centrioles. Their development of advanced expansion microscopy (ExM) methods has helped unravel the roles of centriolar proteins in human disease and visualise cytoskeletal organisation in diverse eukaryotic cells. For our Special Issue on Imaging Cell Architecture and Dynamics, we spoke with Virginie over Zoom about her career, the benefits of running a joint lab with her partner, and the exciting advances being made with techniques like ExM.

Pierre Lalive and John Henry Merryman, Fellows in Art and Cultural Heritage Law – Where Are They Now?

The International Journal of Cultural Property (IJCP) is proud to award yearly the Pierre Lalive and John Henry Merryman Fellowship in Art and Cultural Heritage Law, hosted by the International Cultural Property Society and the Art-Law Centre of the University of Geneva.

Plotting the Geopolitics of Twentieth-Century Modern and Avant-Garde Illustrated Periodicals

Illustrated journals are available digitally in unprecedented quantities, and on a global scale. As such, they provide the ideal foundation to examine globalization logics in the history of art and literature through the prism of ‘distant reading and viewing’. When articulated and completed by more traditional close reading of the sources, a computational approach can raise new questions about the international circulation of images in illustrated periodicals. It may help to reinterpret, and even better understand, the variety of flows and imbalances in the international circulation of images, that are often taken too quickly as evidence of centrality or peripherality. This paper presents the perspectives opened by the Visual Contagions project (SNSF, University of Geneva, CH), which analyses images from thousands of illustrated periodicals published worldwide from the 1890s to the 1990s. Images do not magically circulate, nor do styles ‘diffuse’ and provide evidence of ‘influences’, as it is often assumed. The computational approach is used to analyse avant-garde periodicals, and it allowed us to highlight networks of image exchange, affinities between magazines, countries, and cultural or social milieus. Such methodologies emphasize the social logics that promoted the circulation of images and styles, and unveil the authorial or distributive role of some key publications in the avant-garde; but they also reveal and help understand image diffusions that were previously difficult to explain other than by a Zeitgeist, by the notion of centres and peripheries, or by a formalist approach that consolidated the non-questioned domination of European canons.

Editorial − 2020 Real Estate Finance & Investment Symposium

In September and October 2020, the Real Estate Finance & Investment Symposium, sponsored and organized by the University of Cambridge, the University of Florida, the University of Geneva, and the National University of Singapore, was held online, given the COVID-19 pandemic. Ten papers on various research topics were presented in five two-hour sessions spread over five days. Each presentation was followed by remarks from a discussant as well as general discussion from the audience. This editorial discusses the five papers from the symposium that are included in this special issue.

Editorial

The first edition of 2024 for the International Journal of Sustainable Fashion & Textiles (SFT) is a Special Issue linked to the recent PLATE conference that took place at Aalto University in Helsinki, Finland in 2023 facilitated by Kirsi Niinimäki of Aalto University, Finland, Cosette M. Joyner Martinez, now based at Texas State University, United States, Claudia E. Henninger from the University of Manchester, United Kingdom and Katia Dayan Vladimirova from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. The issue comprises of a variety of papers addressing ‘The Future of Sustainable Clothing Use Practice’. The papers present differing viewpoints and angles to tackle a key issue in the fashion industry that is linked to its dirty secret – its waste problem. The collection of articles outlines not only key contributions to the field, but also highlights areas of future research.

Learning from COVID-19: A roadmap for integrated risk assessment and management across shocks of pandemics, biodiversity loss, and climate change

The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the fragility of international, national, regional, and local risk management systems. It revealed an urgent need to improve risk planning, preparedness, and communication strategies. In parallel, it created an opportunity to drastically re-think and transform societal processes and policies to prevent future shocks originating not only from health, but also combined with those related to climate change and biodiversity loss. In this perspective, we examine how to improve integrated risk assessment and management (IRAM) capacities to address interconnected shocks. We present the results from a series of workshops within the framework of the University of Zurich and University of Geneva. Initiative "Shaping Resilient Societies: A Multi-Stakeholder Approach to Create a Responsive Society". This initiative gathered experts from multiple disciplines to discuss their perspectives on resilience; here we present the key messages of the "Pandemics, Climate and Sustainability” thinking group. We identify a roadmap and selected research areas concerning the improvement of IRAM analysis capacities, practices, policies. We recommend the development of robust data systems and science-policy advice systems to address combined shocks emerging from health, biodiversity loss and climate change. We posit that further developing the IRAM framework to include these recommendations will improve societal preparedness and response capacity and will provide more empirical evidence supporting decision-making and the selection of strategies and measures for integrated risk reduction.

The Progression of Hydrobiological Microbial Studies in the University Extramural Setting

This manuscript delineates the progression of microbial hydrobiology within the ambit of an ‘extramural’ university model, illustrated through the establishment of the Laboratory of Microbial Ecology (LEM) in Cantone Ticino and the Microbial Ecology Group at the University of Geneva. Situated within the premises of the Cantonal Institute of Microbiology, LEM has been instrumental in advancing scientific research and education at both graduate and undergraduate levels in the domains of clinical and environmental microbiology. The core research at LEM concentrates on bacterial species prevalent in freshwater environments, particularly those with the potential for human contamination under specific circumstances, thereby underscoring their importance in clinical microbiology. The research also extends to microbial species crucial in biogeochemical cycles within both pristine and anthropogenically influenced freshwater ecosystems. This manuscript offers a comprehensive overview of the scientific endeavors undertaken by LEM, detailing the studied bacterial species and mapping the evolution of analytical methodologies over the past three decades. Notably, advancements in microbiology and molecular biology have facilitated the identification and monitoring of emerging opportunistic pathogens such as Aeromonas, Yersinia, and Legionella in environmental settings, elucidating their transmission pathways from natural habitats to human infection. A particular focus of the study is the permanently stratified ecosystem of Lake Cadagno, a meromictic lake adjacent to the Alpine Biology Centre. This lake serves as a paradigm for understanding biogeochemical processes in freshwater ecosystems, with an emphasis on the biological filter formed at the chemocline. This filter plays a pivotal role in sequestering toxic elements like sulfide, primarily through the activity of anaerobic key genera including Chromatium and Lamprocystis. Moreover, the collaboration between the institutions in Geneva and Ticino has fostered numerous PhD research projects, the establishment of the Alpine Biology Center in Piora, and the development of an academic facility within the new premises of the Cantonal Institute of Microbiology in Bellinzona.

Summer School Report: Jyväskylä Summer School Course on Ultrafast Spectroscopy

The 32nd edition of the Jyväskylä Summer School (JSS32) was in high demand for the ultrafast spectroscopy chapter. On August 7–11 2023 nearly 40 students gathered to Jyväskylä to tune in for the JSS32 course entitled UltrafastSpectroscopy: phenomena, experiments and data analysis methods. The course was coordinated by Senior Lecturer Tatu Kumpulainen and featured lectures each morning from two invited speakers, Prof. Eric Vauthey, University of Geneva, Switzerland, and Assoc. Prof. Jens Uhlig, Lund University, Sweden. In addition to the lectures, the course featured four workshops in the afternoons aimed at introducing the participants to the practical aspects of steady-state and time-resolved spectroscopies. Besides the scientific content, JSS32 offered several social events where participants could network with other participants of the whole summer school.

EDGARD MILHAUD AND THE CASE FOR ESTABLISHING AN INTERNATIONAL CLEARING UNION IN THE 1930S: A FORGOTTEN FORERUNNER OF KEYNES?

Edgard Milhaud (1873–1964), a professor at the University of Geneva, published a series of texts (from 1932 onwards) promoting the establishment of multilateral international compensation between nation-states, and actively campaigned for this project. His plan centered on a call for a “gold truce” as an alternative to the bilateral clearing agreements that proliferated at the time. The plan drew the attention of several international organizations. It reached the point of arousing the interest of the League of Nations (LON), which decided in 1934 to launch an inquiry (published in 1935) questioning LON members about the project of making clearing agreements multilateral. The Milhaud plan nevertheless fell into oblivion after the Tripartite Agreement (1936) and then the outbreak of WW II. This work aims to situate the Milhaud plan in its intellectual and political context—i.e., the 1930s—analyze its content, and understand its failure. The article also assesses what it had in common with Keynes’s plan for an international clearing union developed several years later.

Clinical pharmacology and pharmacogenomics for implementation of personalized medicine.

With the aim of integrating clinical pharmacology with pharmacogenomics and providing a platform to gather clinicians, academicians, diagnostic laboratory personnel andscientists from related domains, the International Conference on Clinical Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics 2023 (ICCPP 2023) was jointly organized by the Department of Pharmacology, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India and the CANSEARCH research platform in Pediatric Oncology and Hematology, University of Geneva, Geneva, Switzerland. The conference was held on 31August and 1September2023, as a continued Indo-Swiss scientific exchange event series. In this report we describe the proceedings of this conference for the benefit of peers who could not attend the conference but are interested in knowing about the scientific program in detail.

Contributor biographies

Contributor biographies

Images of Nature: Introduction to the Special Issue

This Special Issue on ‘Images of Nature’ in the longue durée has its origins in a historical conference on ‘Nature’ at the University of Geneva in the summer of 2022 (6th Swiss History Days, 29 June–1 July 2022) [...]

Emerging tropane alkaloids: Global development and potential health threats

Abstract Tropane alkaloids (TAs) are a kind of plant secondary metabolite that mainly originate from Solanaceae. They have potent anticholinergic activity, and are well-known anticholinergic drugs, but have also been reported as plant toxins. Many studies have been conducted on TAs, but no scientometric research has been performed. This study aimed to expound the knowledge network and development of the field of TAs and predict the emerging development topics based on bibliometrics. In particular, this research combined VOSviewer and CiteSpace for visualization and covered 1,298 related scientific publications (1953–2022). The research on TAs is rapidly developing, with the participation of 86 countries, 1,129 research institutions, and 4,087 researchers. China, the University of Geneva, and P. Christen are the most productive country, institution, and researcher, respectively. Currently, the main research topics on TAs include biosynthesis, in vitro synthesis, chemical synthesis, and determination methods. Since 2018, the monitoring of TAs in food related to human health has shown citation burst characteristics, which is considered an emerging development trend in the future. The findings of this study will enable researchers to quickly tap into the knowledge background/structure of TAs from massive data to provide a reference for further research.

Cell scientist to watch – Charlotte Aumeier

ABSTRACT Charlotte Aumeier is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. After completing her PhD at the University of Bonn, Germany, studying the cytoskeleton of diatoms, Charlotte moved to the University of Grenoble, France, for a postdoc, where she became hooked on microtubules. In 2018, she established her own lab in Geneva, where she and her team work to uncover the dynamics and regulatory mechanisms of microtubule networks using a variety of approaches, including synthetic biology and non-standard model organisms. We spoke with Charlotte over Zoom to learn more about her work, her love of diatoms and how she views some of the biggest challenges of her career as her biggest advantages as a scientist.

Modeling and simulation of a 16.20 kWp on-grid solar Photovoltaic System (PV) using PVSyst at Malaysia

Renewable energy is very useful alternative source to replace the usage of conventional energy. Solar energy is one of popular energy that has been utilised as its irradiance can generate electricity when strike with the photovoltaic solar (PV) panels. This paper presents a design and simulation of 16.20 kWp of 405W Si-mono PV system connected to the grid. It is very crucial to do the simulation in order to do the analysis in terms of performance, efficiency, power losses, irradiance and other related factors. The design, operation, and maintenance of new grid-connected solar PV systems may benefit from performance analysis. PVsyst is used as the design and simulation tools for the PV solar system simulation. It was developed by the University of Geneva as a pedagogical tool to explain in detail the procedures and models used, as well as to provide an ergonomic approach to project development. The site involves is Kampung Bukit Tinggi. From the simulation results, the array nominal energy is 25.81 MWh. The output inverter energy available is 21.59 MWh which fed to the grid. The performances ratio is 80.21% due to the several losses. This study may be useful for future grid-connected design and operation.

The real cost of teaching in a refugee camp: Asking the difficult questions

AbstractThis article asks difficult questions about higher-education courses provided by Western institutions to people living in refugee camps. It critically examines a blended-learning approach that incorporates a massive online open course (MOOC) into a scaffolded higher-education program—the University of Geneva’s Connected Blended Learning model—in the Kakuma refugee camp. It assesses the effectiveness of this approach in an accredited University of Geneva human-rights law course, which ran in the Kakuma camp from 2017 to 2020. On the basis of the long experience of the course leaders and research carried out with students who participated in the course, the article explores ways of improving this model by answering difficult questions about the real cost of teaching in a refugee camp. This paper was co-written by a professor, a researcher, and students who were involved in the course, two of whom are refugees living in Kakuma refugee camp.