Organization Executive Board and Central Administration

Executive Board of the University of Bern

Functions and tasks

  • Management of the Rector's Office
  • Chair of the Senate  
  • Presides over the Executive Board of the University of Bern
  • Monitors the tasks of the Senate and the Executive Board of the University of Bern
  • Negotiates nominations for professorships and associate professorships
  • Responsible for relationships with other higher education institutions in Switzerland and abroad
  • Fulfills the tasks assigned by university legislation and the regulations governing the university's activities

Short biography of Christian Leumann

Prof. Dr. Christian Leumann has assumed the office of Rector of the University of Bern as of August 1, 2016. Leumann has been a member of the Executive Board of the University of Bern since 2011 as Vice-Rector for Research. Christian Leumann was born in 1958 in Lausanne and was raised in Arlesheim near Basel. He graduated in chemistry from the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. After a post-doc spell at the University of California in Berkeley and five years of research at the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Leumann became Professor of Bioorganic Chemistry at the University of Bern in 1993. His focus in research is the development of chemically modified nucleic acid analogues as well as their utilization in the treatment of genetic diseases. Leumann has successfully completed a number of sabbaticals, including at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla and at Stanford University in Palo Alto. In addition to his teaching and research activities, Christian Leumann has also held a number of other posts. For example, he was a member of the research council (Forschungsrat) and President of the Division for Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Engineering of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF). Christian Leumann is married and has two adult children. He lives with his wife in Bern.