Honorary Doctorate

The Honorary Doctorate - Dottorato honoris causa - is conferred as a way of honouring a distinguished person’s contributions to a specific field or to society in general. The awardee is nominated by the University Council based upon a proposal from one of the Faculties. The Honorary Doctorate is bestowed during the Dies academicus or – in certain cases – on other special occasions.

 

USI Honorary Doctorates

Thus far, USI has conferred the Honorary Doctorate to the following persons (the indicated affiliations refer to the year of the honorary doctorate):

Barbara Czarniawska

Professor Emerita at the University of Gothenburg

Honorary Doctorate in Communication Sciences: "forerunner of ethnographic methods and of the eclecticism of qualitative methods applied to management and organisations, of which she has offered an alternative reading in a communicative, narrative and relational key, sensitive to contexts and attentive to the interconnections between organisations and society". 

 

Conferred on May 6, 2023, during the 27th Dies academicus.

 

Alberto Campo Baeza

Professor Emeritus at Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de la Universidad Politécnica de Madrid

Honorary Doctorate in Architecture "for his contribution to the success of Iberian architecture in the world, creating works with great historical awareness combined with constant research into the relationship between landscape, light, space, gravity and time".

 

Conferred on May 6, 2023, during the 27th Dies academicus.

Photo of the awarding

 

Lorrie Faith Cranor

Professor at Carnegie Mellon University

Honorary Doctorate in Informatics “for her relentless pursuit of making privacy and security usable - including her pioneering work on privacy policies, her fundamental contributions towards understanding phishing attacks, the creation of the Symposium of Usable Privacy and Security as the premier forum for research in this area, and her active role in shaping public policy to better protect our privacy”.

 

Conferred on May 7, 2022, during the 26th Dies academicus.

 

Roxana Mehran

Professor at the Zena and Michael A. Wiener Cardiovascular Institute - Mount Sinai School of Medicine

Honorary Doctorate in Biomedical Sciences "for her many substantial contributions to the field of modern cardiology, for her inclusive and multidisciplinary vision in clinical research, and for being a spokesperson in the international community on issues related to equal opportunities and gender medicine".

 

Conferred on May 7, 2022, during the 26th Dies academicus.

 

Denise Scott Brown

Architect and urbanist, principal and co-founder of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia

Honorary Doctorate in Architecture “for her innovative exploration of the ordinary, non-authorial environment of the contemporary city, analysed in terms of symbolism and communication, which has inspired research, theory and architectural practice on an international level”.

 

Conferred on May 8, 2021, during the 25th Dies academicus.

 

Lino Guzzella

Former Rector and President of ETH Zurich

Honorary Doctorate in Biomedical Sciences “for his great vision and courage that lead to the creation of a Bachelor's degree in human medicine at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, and for his significant contribution to the creation of the Master's degree in human medicine at Università della Svizzera italiana, a university he has always supported”.

 

Conferred on May 8, 2021, during the 25th Dies academicus.

Photo of the awarding

 

Fabiola Gianotti

Director-General of CERN

Honorary Doctorate in Communication “for translating her mission of scientific research into a new humanism which, through a deeper understanding of the cosmos, leads us to a deeper understanding of mankind”.

 

Conferred on May 8, 2021, during the 25th Dies academicus.

 

Albert S. Kyle

Professor at the Robert H. Smith School of Business - University of Maryland

Honorary Doctorate in Economics "for his pioneering contribution to the theory of market microstructure by modelling the impact of information asymmetries and strategic behaviour on price formation".  

 

Conferred on May 8, 2021, during the 25th Dies academicus.

 

David Chaum

Computer scientist and cryptographer, founder of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR)

Honorary Doctorate in Informatics “for his several outstanding and fundamental contributions to cryptography and its applications, including the field of secure multiparty computation, the first blockchain, digital currencies, secure and certified voting, and many other methods for protecting privacy in the digital world”.

 

Conferred on May 8, 2021, during the 25th Dies academicus.

 

Linda Argote

Professor at the Tepper School of Business - Carnegie Mellon University

Honorary Doctorate in Economics "for her pioneering contribution to the study of organisational learning and to the understanding of the organisation as a fundamental nexus between the  individual and society".  

 

Conferred on May 9, 2020, during the 24th Dies academicus.

 

Boris Uspenskji

Internationally renowned semiologist and linguist

Honorary Doctorate in Communication Sciences "for having contributed in a decisive way to the understanding of the organic link between culture and communication, developing, together with Jurij M. Lotman, a semiotic conception of cultural production and transmission, and for having given substance to this conception through an inexhaustible practice of analysis, exercised with philological rigour on the figurative arts, on religious and political symbols, on the cultural significance of historical events".

 

Conferred on May 4, 2019, during the 23rd Dies academicus.

 

Howard Burns

Professor Emeritus at Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa

Honorary Doctorate in Architecture “for his scientific merits in the field of architectural history and theory of the Italian Renaissance, innovatively investigated also as a socio-cultural phenomenon and for the breadth of Palladianism in the world”.

 

Conferred on May, 5, 2018, during the 22nd Dies academicus.

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Jürg Conzett

Dipl. Bauingenieur ETH / SIA, Conzett Bronzini Partner AG

Honorary Doctorate in Architecture “for his ability to combine structural analysis, architectural culture, perception of space and landscape as a contemporary expression of that very fine Swiss tradition of cultured and innovative civil engineering”. 

 

Conferred on May 5, 2018, during the 22nd Dies academicus.

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Shriram Krishnamurthi

Professor at Brown University

Honorary Doctorate in Informatics “for the innovations in the field of programming languages and for the extraordinary contributions to the teaching of informatics, from middle school to the university”.

 

Conferred on May 13, 2017, during the 21st Dies academicus.

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Richard Blundell

Professor at University College London

Honorary Doctorate in Economics “in recognition of his fundamental and pioneering contributions to micro-econometrics and empirical analysis for the study of the labour market, consumption, taxation and pension systems”.

 

Conferred on April 23, 2016, during the 20th Dies academicus.

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David Lyon

Professor at Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada)

Honorary Doctorate in Communication Sciences to “acknowledge his pioneering research dedicated to the challenges of information society and his active involvement in key issues in contemporary sociology such as, privacy, electronic surveillance, and ethics of identification”.

 

Conferred on April 23, 2016, during the 20th Dies academicus.

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Franco Farinelli

Professor at Università di Bologna

Honorary Doctorate from in Architecture “for his superior studies dedicated to the theory and history of Geographical Thought, the dimensional foundations of Western culture and the genesis of the modern concept of landscape”.

 

Conferred on April 18, 2015, during the 19th Dies academicus.

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Jean-Pierre Danthine

Professor at the University of Lausanne and former Vice President of the Swiss National Bank

Honorary Doctorate in Economics “for his outstanding contributions to the study of the interaction of macroeconomics and finance”.

 

Conferred on April 18, 2015, during the 19th Dies academicus.

Photo of the awarding

 

Gilles Brassard

Professor at Université de Montréal

Honorary Doctorate in Informatics “for his outstanding contributions to cryptography, in particular for his pioneering role in the development of quantum cryptography”.

 

Conferred on April 18, 2015, during the 19th Dies academicus.

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Jimmy Wales

Co-founder of Wikipedia and founder of Wikimedia

Honorary Doctorate in Communication Sciences “for his role in the promotion of knowledge online, and for making an open encyclopedic platform available to different cultures and in different languages”.

 

Conferred on May 17, 2014, during the 18th Dies academicus.

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Mimmo Iodice

One of most influential names in Italian photography

Honorary Doctorate in Architecture “for his ability to combine reality and imagination, through careful visual and photographic elaboration, skilfully interpreting the history and culture of the Mediterranean”.

 

Conferred on May 4, 2013, during the 17th Dies academicus.

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John D. Sterman

Professor of Management and Engineering System at the MIT Sloan School of Management (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston)

Honorary Doctorate in Economics “his pioneering contributions to system dynamics, organisational dynamics and dynamics of behavioral decision-making process”.

 

Conferred on May 12, 2012, during the 16th Dies academicus.

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Barbara H. Liskov

Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The first woman in the US to obtain a PhD in Computer Science

Honorary Doctorate in Informatics “for her pioneering contributions to the definition of programming languages and software engineering”.

 

Conferred on May 14, 2011, during the 15th Dies academicus.

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Werner Oechslin

Internationally renowned theorist and historian of architecture

Honorary Doctorate in Architecture “for his innovative contributions to the theory and history of architecture, an expression of his broad humanistic and intellectual conviction, which prominently elevated the debate at an institutional and professional level even beyond the Swiss context”.

 

Conferred on May 14, 2011, during the 15th Dies academicus.

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Frans H. van Eemeren

Professor at the University of Amsterdam. Founder of the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation

Honorary Doctorate in Communication Sciences “for his decisive contribution to the study of argumentation, understood as a critical and reasonable method for settling differences of opinion, which led to the formulation of an argumentation model that reconciles argumentation and rhetoric, specifying the criteria for validity of the process of argumentation and communicative conditions for its effectiveness”.

 

Conferred on April 17, 2010, during the 14th Dies academicus.

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Ernst Fehr

Director of the Institute for Empirical Research in Economics at the University of Zurich

Honorary Doctorate in Economics “for having significantly contributed, with his research, to the understanding of the behaviour of economic agents beyond the neoclassical theory of the rational agent”.

 

Conferred on May 9, 2009, during the 13th Dies academicus.

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David Lorge Parnas

Pioneer in software engineering

Honorary Doctorate in Informatics “for his rich and profound contributions to the software design and for his promotion of social responsibility in the engineering sciences”.

 

Conferred on April 19, 2008, during the 12th Dies academicus.

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Mimmo Paladino

Well-known and innovative Italian artist

Honorary Doctorate in Architecture “for the lucidity with which he investigates spatial issues without losing sight of the specifics of their own figurative language, and for his continuous research capable of conferring an evocative and poetic dimension to spatial analysis, which is certainly a reference point for architects”.

 

Conferred on April 19, 2008, during the 12th Dies academicus.

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Bernard Miège

Professor Emeritus of Informatics and Communication at Stehdahl University (Grenoble III)

Honorary Doctorate in Communication Sciences “for having provided, with his research, a fundamental contribution to the understanding of the relationship between industrial development of the media, technological innovation and the transformation of society”.

 

Conferred on May 12, 2007, during the 11th Dies academicus.

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Leslie Lamport

Scientific researcher at Microsoft Research in California

Honorary Doctorate in Informatics “for his pioneering contributions to theoretical fundamentals of distributed informatics systems”.

 

Conferred on May 13, 2006, during the 10th Dies academicus.

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Stephen A. Ross

Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

Honorary Doctorate in Economics “for his fundamental contribution to the theory of valuation of financial activities and corporate decisions”.

 

Conferred on May 13, 2006, during the 10th Dies academicus.

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Giuseppe Panza di Biumo

One of the greatest and most innovative contemporary art collectors

Honorary Doctorate in Architecture “for having promoted artists and movements inspired by poetic space with intensity and efficacy, and in doing so having shown architects new pathways that have enriched the references and principles of their discipline and encouraged the development of aesthetic research on spatiality from a contemporary perspective”.

 

Conferred on May 14, 2005, during the 9th Dies academicus.

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Robert F. Engle

Professor at New York University

Honorary Doctorate in Economics “in recognition of his role as pioneer in the elaboration of mathematic models for the measurement between economic and financial variables, with particular regard to co-integration analysis of prices and the volatility of returns”.

 

Conferred on October 21, 2003, during the 7th Dies academicus.

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John R. Searle

Professor at University of California, Berkeley

Honorary Doctorate in Communication Sciences “for his extraordinary contributions to the understanding of the foundations of Communication Sciences, with particular regard to relationships between the mind, action, language and processes of construction of social reality”.

 

Conferred on May 23, 2003, during the series of keynote lectures The philosophical foundations of the Communication Sciences.

Photo of the awarding