Michael Hengartner
Michael Otmar Hengartner is a Swiss-Canadian biochemist and molecular biologist. He is the Rector of the University of Zurich and President of the Swiss Rectors' Conference, swissuniversities.Life
Hengartner was born in 1966 as the son of a mathematics professor in Switzerland. The family lived after his birth, first in Paris, later in Bloomington, Indiana and Quebec. Hengartner therefore grew up in Quebec City and studied there, until 1988, biochemistry at the Université Laval. He received his doctorate in 1994, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under H. Robert Horvitz. He then led a research group at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. In 2001, he was appointed to the newly established Ernst Hadorn Endowed Professorship at the Institute of Molecular Biology of the University of Zurich. From 2009 to 2014, he was Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Zurich. From 2014 to 2019, he was rector of the University of Zurich, he took up a position as the director of the ETH Board in 2019.
He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, since 2009.
Hengartner is married to biologist Denise Hengartner. The couple has six children.Research interests
Hengartner is researching the molecular basis of apoptosis. He uses especially the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as molecular organism. He is also investigating mechanisms of cancer, Alzheimer's and geriatric diseases.
