Ursula Röthlisberger

A professor of computational chemistry and biochemistry at the Institute of Chemical Science and Engineering and the head of the Laboratory of Computational Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Ursula Röthlisberger was born in Solothurn (Switzerland). She began her work in chemistry at the University of Bern, where she acquired a degree in physical chemistry in the group of Prof. Ernst Schumacher. She continued in her studies as a doctoral student and, of special note, completed her PhD project in collaboration with Dr. Wanda Andreoni at the IBM Zürich Research Laboratory in Rüschlikon. After finishing her PhD in 1991, she spent three years as a postdoctoral research assistant in the group of Prof. Michael L. Klein at the University of Pennsylvania (USA) and another year in the group of Prof. Michele Parrinello at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Physics in Stuttgart (Germany).

In 1996, she moved to ETH Zürich as a Profile-2 Fellow, hosted by the group of prof. Wilfred F. van Gunsteren and became an assistant professor of computer-aided inorganic chemistry the following year. Apart from her time at ETH, she spent a year as a visiting professor at SISSA in Italy, until finally, her group relocated to EPFL in 2002, where she became an associate professor. Shortly after she joined EPFL, Ursula was appointed a director of the Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Section at the Faculty of Basic Sciences, with her term lasting for three years. As of 2009, she has been a full professor at EPFL.

She currently holds a position of an associate editor of JCTC and is an elected member of several scientific organizations. Her scientific achievements are recognized within Switzerland (Ruzicka Prize, Doron Prize) as well as on an international scale (Dirac Medal of the WATOC).

On-going collaborations

Michael Grätzel (EPFL)
Development of  new materials and techniques for improving solar cell performance. 

Jovanna V. Milić (UniFr)
Investigation of 2D perovskites for perovskite-based solar cells.

Paul Dyson (EPFL), Curtis A. Davey (NTU Singapore)
Search for transition-metal-based anticancer drugs.

Paolo Carloni (FZ Jülich, DE), Raimund Dutzler (UZH), Alessandra Magistrato (SISSA, IT)
Simulations of transmembrane ion and lipid transport in cellular membranes.

MiMiC Consortium
Paolo Carloni (FZ Jülich, DE), Jógvan Magnus Haugaard Olsen (DTU, DK), Simone Meloni (UniFe, IT)
Development of flexible QM/MM framework for multiscale chemical modelling.

SNSF Sinergia Project
Shi-Xia Liu (UniBe), Thomas Feurer (UniBe), Bong-Joo Kang (UniBe), Ernst Meyer (UniBas) and Thilo Glatzel (UniBas)
Exploring charged and excited states of molecules on surfaces as new building blocks for molecular electronics.