Meet the SSN presidents

 

Pierre Magistretti (1997-1998)

"When SSN was established from its embryonic form, SWIBRO (Swiss IBRO), 25 years ago the hope was to establish a national umbrella organization that would organize a yearly meeting where neuroscientists active on all areas could gather, from molecular to behavioral and to give Swiss neuroscience a voice in the nascent FENS. Looking back it seems fair to say that both goals have been achieved."

Ann Kato (1999-2000)

"It is an honour and a privilege to be a past-president of the SSN. As one of the founding members, we could not have imagined that the society would be as successful as it is today. In 2008, the SSN hosted the European Neuroscience meeting in Geneva and it was considered a huge success."

Jean-Marc Burgunder (2001-2001)

"The SSN has been from its very beginning a society with active participation of neuroscientists working in clinical and in basic sciences. This has fostered a fruitful collaboration and opened new avenues walked in both directions to understand brain mechanisms and search for therapies in disorders involving this most complex part of the individual."

Jean-Marc Fritschy (2002-2004)

"Neuroscience research holds the promise to unravel how the brain works and to provide a cure for devastating and costly diseases and is of paramount importance for society. By federating neuroscientists in Switzerland, the SSN was founded to become a major interlocutor of policy makers and get effective support for achieving its goals without delay."

Eric Rouiller (2005-2006)

"The creation of the SSN in the late nineties allowed the projection of Swiss Neurosciences into the 21st century. A crucial and urgent at the time step to finally federate the neuroscience disciplines in Switzerland, assembling basic and clinician neuroscientists. SSN beautifully fulfilled this mission."

Stephanie Clarke (2007-2008)

"The SSN is where neuroscientists from different disciplines and at different stages of their careers can exchange ideas and shape future research. More than ever, a dialogue between basic and clinical neuroscience is necessary to bring new insights to neurological diseases and to their treatments."

Nicole Schaeren-Wiemers (2009-2010)

"The SSN was for me the opportunity to meet neuroscientist from different topics from Switzerland and from different countries in Europe. I like that the SNN foster the exchange of neuroscience and facilitates the people for collaborations.  For me is the most important thing that the SNN supports young neuroscientist on their carrier path."

Esther Stoeckli (2011-2012)

"The SSN is amazing! No other European country has such a large active Neuroscience community compared to its population size!"

Christoph Michel (2013-2014)

"The SSN connects researchers from universities in the German-, French-, and Italian-speaking regions. I am particularly pleased to see that the ySSN, established during my presidency, has grown into such an important communication network for young neuroscientists across the country."

Daniel Kiper (2015-2016)

"The SSN is not only an organization that promotes excellence in the field of neuroscience, but one that provides wonderful, informal and friendly opportunities for networking in Switzerland. It allows several generations of neuroscientists to interact and to learn from one another."

Pierre Lavenex (2017-2018)

"The Swiss Society for Neuroscience is the epitome of a scientific society: a big family aiming for excellence, fostering young scientists' careers, building bridges and supporting all disciplines equally to advance our knowledge of the functions and dysfunctions of the nervous system."

Gregor Rainer (2019-2020)

"The SSN has been an opportunity to meet and work together with colleagues from all over Switzerland, represent the interests of Swiss Neuroscience nationally and internationally, and make incremental progress in digitalisation of aspects including membership and annual meeting management, albeit incremental."

Anita Lüthi (2021-2022)

"The SSN is the excitatory synapse of the Swiss Neuroscience community. It connects the student to the PI, the fundamental to the clinical researcher, the coffee drinker to the neuronal decoder. It is plastic in response to novel trends, it spills over boundaries, yet it remains a pillar of contact and exchange across the years."

Valerio Mante (2023-2024)

Tania Barkat (2025-2026)