The Botnar Research Centre for Child Health (BRCCH) in Basel now has the opportunity to significantly expand its research activities. Following a donation of 50 million Swiss francs from the Basel-based Fondation Botnar, six new professorships can be created, three of which will be based at the University of Basel and three at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH).

The research focus of the professorships will be on pediatric digital health. According to a press release jointly issued by the two universities, their research areas range from biomolecular diagnostics to the development, application and integration of state-of-the-art analysis methods, all the way through to investigating ethical and political framework conditions in digitized pediatric healthcare.

To the benefit of children all over the world

The two universities work with a couple of other partner institutions, namely the University Children’s Hospital Basel (UKBB) and the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), at the BRCCH, which was founded in 2019. Up to this point, the Fondation Botnar has funded their research activities to the tune of 115 million Swiss francs overall. This funding is intended to benefit the healthcare of children all over the world, but especially in poorer countries. More than 400 researchers have been involved in projects to date.

In the years to come, the new professors and their research teams will be based at a new BRCCH site located on the University of Basel’s Life Sciences Campus. This is situated in close proximity to the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) of ETH Zurich in Basel. “At the same time, we wish to emphasize that ETH and the University are determined to support the cutting-edge research at the BRCCH in the long-term”, explains Professor Torsten Schwede, Vice President for Research at the University of Basel, in the press release.