University Council

Monica Duca Widmer (1959) is a chemical engineer (ETH Zurich graduate in 1984, dottore in chimica at Università degli Studi Milano, in 1987). She has been a member of USI Council since July 2016 where she was appointed President in December of the same year. Since 1992, she has been a director and founding partner of EcoRisana SA, president of the Brandenberger Foundation, a member of the Daccò and Leonardo Foundations and a member of the Board of Directors of the Swiss Saltworks (Schweizer Salinen). From 2008 to 2024 she was a member of the Board of Directors of Migros Ticino, where she served as President from 2011 to 2024. From 2019 to 2022, she was President of the Federal Holding Company for Armament BGRB, from 2023 to 2025 of RUAG MRO Holding AG. Monica Duca Widmer was also Member of Parliament of the Canton Ticino (1995-2011, President 2007/2008), member of the Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH-Rat 1998-2008), and member of the Federal Commission for NBC Protection ComNBC (1995-2007). She was also member of the Federal Communications Commission ComCom (2005-2017, Vice-president 2011-2017), of the Swiss Federal Nuclear Safety Inspectorate ENSI (2016-2019, Vice-president 2018), of the Federal Rüstungskommission (armaments commission, 2008-2019, Vice-president from 2015), of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences SATW (2008-2019, Vice-president 2013 -2019), of the Council of the University of Lucerne (2012-2017), of the Council of the University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland (2004-2015), and President of the steering Board of the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre CSCS (2004-2007).

Rector of the ETH Zurich (Zurich Polytechnic) since February 2022, Günther Dissertori grew up in South Tyrol and studied at the University of Innsbruck. From there he moved to CERN in Geneva as a PhD student, where he began his research career. In 2001 he was appointed Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich and six years later he became Full Professor. At CERN he contributed to the creation of the CMS experiment at the large particle accelerator, one of the two experiments that managed to detect the Higgs particle. For their work, Peter Higgs and François Englert received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013. Together with ETH colleagues Christophorus Grab, Felicitas Pauss and Rainer Wallny, Dissertori helped pave the way for this achievement. Dissertori and his group have also developed new positron emission tomography (PET) scanners, including an economically advantageous pet brain scanner, which is about to be placed on the market by spin-off company Positrigo AG.His impressive collection of “Golden Owls” demonstrates his enthusiasm for teaching. Students in his department have already awarded him the prize four times for exceptional teaching. Dissertori also received the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching.

Marina Carobbio Guscetti has been serving as State Councillor of the Republic and Canton of Ticino since 2023 and is head of the Department of Education, Culture and Sport (DECS). She graduated in medicine from the University of Basel in 1991 and worked as a family physician. She was a deputy in the Ticino Grand Council from 1991 to 2007 and served as a member of the National Council from 2007 to 2019. During her time, she was a part of the Finance Commission, the Social Security and Health Commission, and the Finance Delegation. In 2018 and 2019, she was elected President of the National Council and Federal Assembly. Also, in 2019, she became the first woman from Ticino and the first Ticino member of the Socialist Party to be elected to the Council of States. In the Council of States, she was a member of the Finance Commission, the Social Security and Health Commission, the Science, Education and Culture Commission, and the Parliamentary Delegation to the Council of Europe.

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Annamaria Astrologo is an Adjunct Professor at USI Faculty of Economics. She completed her undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Law of the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna and, at the same University, she attended the Doctorate School in Law and Criminal Procedure for three years. She defended her doctoral thesis in 2006 and completed several study and research programmes at the Max-Planck-Institut zur Erforschung von Kriminalität, Sicherheit und Recht in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. In 2018, she obtained a Master of Advanced Studies in Economic Law and Business Crime from SUPSI. Additionally, she is a lecturer for the "Swiss Criminal Law" course at the Faculty of Law of the University of Insubria. Her research activity, carried out within the Law Institute (IDUSI), focuses mainly on economic criminal law (with a focus on money laundering and corruption offences) and corporate criminal and social responsibility.

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Glenda Braendli (1980) holds a degree in economics obtained at USI in 2003. In 2006 she earned her federal diploma as a certified accountant in Zurich, continuing her professional career in banking auditing at PricewaterhouseCoopers SA (PwC). As an audit expert and lead auditor licensed by the Audit Oversight Authority, she has carried out numerous consulting and audit mandates in Ticino and Switzerland, directed important strategic projects at Swiss and international level and was the partner in charge of PwC's Lugano office until June 2020. She is, among other mandates, a member of the Committee for the Swiss Italian Section of EXPERTsuisse and a member of the Ticino Chapter of the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce, the Risk Management Advisory Board for the Villa Negroni Study Centre in Vezia and the Advisory Board of the Executive Master in Business Administration (EMBA) offered by USI.

Christoph Frank is a Full Professor at USI Academy of Architecture, where he directs the Institute of the History and Theory of Art and Architecture (ISA). He graduated in History of Art and History of the Classical Tradition from the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes of the University of London. Prior to joining USI, from 1994 until 2006 he was responsible for the department of art history at the Forschungszentrum Europäische Aufklärung at Potsdam. During this time, he was also a Lehrbeauftragter at the Institute of Art History of the Technische Universität in Berlin. Moreover, from 2000 until 2002, he held the Max-Planck-Research-Fellowship at the Bibliotheca Hertziana in Rome. In 2005, he worked as a Research Associate at the Fondation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris and Columbia University of New York. His recent publications focus on European art and architecture from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the history of collecting in Germany and Russia, the impact of agents and correspondents on art and architecture, as well as the art theories of Denis Diderot and Friedrich Melchior Grimm.

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Born in 1962, Giovanni Merlini earned a License in Law from the University of Bern in 1988, which was followed by obtaining a Cantonal Lawyer's License in 1991 and a Cantonal Notary Public's Patent in 1993. The same year he obtained a Doctorate in Law from the University of Bern. Today he practices as a lawyer and notary public and owns a law and notary firm with offices in Locarno and Lugano.Giovanni Merlini has a long political career at all institutional levels: in the 1990s he first served as a city councilor and then became a municipal councilor in Minusio; from 1995 to 2011 he was a deputy in the Grand Council; and from 2014 to 2019 he served as a national councilor. In Bern he was a member of the Legal Affairs Commission and the Delegation for Relations with the Italian Parliament of the National Council.

Bruno Moretti was a Full Professor of Italian linguistics at the University of Bern, where he also held the position of Pro-Rector for teaching from 2011 until his retirement in 2021. He is the author of numerous publications in the fields of sociolinguistics and multilingualism. Among his interests, the study of Swiss linguistics in all its aspects occupies a special position. From 1995 to 2019 he directed the Osservatorio linguistico della Svizzera italiana (Linguistic Observatory of Italian Switzerland) and since 2019 has chaired the Scientific Committee. From 2002 to 2005 he was president of the Swiss Society for Linguistics and from 2009 to 2011 vice-president of the Italian Linguistics Society. Since 2016 he has been a Corresponding Academician of the Accademia della Crusca.

Henry Peter, 1957, is Full Professor at the Law School of the University of Geneva - the same university where, in 1988, he obtained his PhD degree, following a period as visiting scholar at the University of California at Berkeley, which he joined thanks to a fellowship granted by the Swiss National Fund for Scientific Research. Between 1998 and 2012, he set up and has been head of the Master in Business Law postgraduate program of the Universities of Geneva and Lausanne. From 2006 to 2017 he was the head of the Department of Commercial Law at the University of Geneva Law School. In September 2017, he was appointed by the Rectorate of the University of Geneva to create and direct the Geneva Centre for Philanthropy. One of his main research interests is the analysis of sound governance in both public and private sectors. He is the author or editor of more than 120 publications (books and articles) in his various fields of expertise. He holds academic posts at various Swiss and international universities and is a member of federal commissions, committees (both sector-specific and non-profit and philanthropic) and boards of directors. In addition to his teaching and research activities, Henry Peter is a partner in a Swiss law firm (Lugano office).

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Full Professor and Director of medical oncology, as well as the thoracic malignancies program in the Department of Oncology at the University Hospital of Lausanne, Solange Peters received both her doctorate in medicine and PhD from the University Hospital of Lausanne. After completing her clinical education in medical oncology and molecular biology in Switzerland and Italy, Prof. Peters has specialized in thoracic tumors, lung cancer, and pleural tumors. Her main fields of interest are new biomarkers discovery and validation in preclinical and clinical settings, multimodality strategies for locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), as well as cancer immunotherapy. Parallel, she acts as the Scientific Committee Chair and Foundation Council member of the European Thoracic Oncology Platform (ETOP). She was recently nominated as the Strategic Advisory Board President of Paris Saclay Cancer Cluster, is President of the Swiss Academy of Multidisciplinary Oncology (SAMO), and is Vice Director of the Swiss National Cancer League. Prof. Peters is active in the educational programs of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) - where she created the Women for Oncology Committee and for which she was the youngest President ever for an extended time of 3 years 2020-2022. She is part of the Board of Directors of Galenica SA. Professor Peters has authored more than 500 peer-reviewed manuscripts and book chapters, acts as Associate Editor of the Annals of Oncology, and of ESMO Open, Co-Editor in Chief of Lung Cancer, and serves on the editorial board of several other oncology journals.

Martina Caroni (1969) is Full Professor of Public Law, International Law, and Comparative Public Law at the University of Lucerne, and President of the National Commission for the Prevention of Torture. After completing her schooling in Bern and Florence, she began her studies in Law at the Faculty of Law of the University of Bern in October 1988. During her studies, she worked as a student assistant at the Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology (Prof. K.-L. Kunz) at the University of Bern. After obtaining her law degree in December 1993, she worked from January 1994 as an assistant to Prof. Walter Kälin at the Institute of Public Law of the University of Bern. In the same year, she also worked for six months at the Secretariat of the European Commission of Human Rights in Strasbourg. After completing her doctoral dissertation, she continued her work as a senior assistant at the Institute of Public Law of the University of Bern. In 2000/2001, she earned a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from Yale Law School in the United States, where she continued her research activities until March 2002. Since April 2002, Martina Caroni has been active at the University of Lucerne, initially as an Assistant Professor and—after completing her habilitation at the University of Bern—since October 2006 as a Full Professor. From March 1, 2017 to July 31, 2024, Martina Caroni served as Vice-Rector for Teaching and International Relations at the University of Lucerne.