The Johanna Spyri and Heidi archives in Zurich have been added to UNESCO's Memory of the World International Register.

Erythropoietin, or Epo for short, is familiar from doping cases. But the body itself also produces this vital hormone. Now, for the first time, an international research team including scientists has been able to identify the main producer of Epo: a subgroup of kidney cells called Norn cells.

Neuroscientists at the University of Zurich have developed innovative objectives for light microscopy by using mirrors to produce images. Their design finds correspondence in mirror telescopes used in astronomy on the one hand and the eyes of scallops on the other. The new objectives enable high-resolution imaging of tissues and organs in a much wider variety of immersion media than with conventional microscope lenses.

West African chimpanzees in Guinea are threatened by mining. Using a novel genetic approach, researchers together with an international team have collected information on the population size and community structure of the threatened species. These data provide an important basis for assessing the impact of mining

Researchers at the University of Zurich have developed a new tool that uses artificial intelligence to predict the efficacy of various genome editing repair options. Unintentional errors in the correction of DNA mutations of genetic diseases can thus be reduced.

In 1986, UZH physicist and IBM Fellow K. Alex Müller and his colleague J. Georg Bednorz revolutionized solid-state physics with the discovery of the first high-temperature superconductor. In the following year, 1987, the two researchers were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics. K. Alex Müller has now died in Zurich at the age of 95.

Over a dozen climate-related lawsuits are pending at the European Court of Human Rights, putting legal processes at the institution to the test. Two UZH lawyers are investigating how courts can reach fair decisions in climate cases.

Similar to humans, chimpanzees combine vocalizations into larger communicatively meaningful structures. researchers suggest that this ability might be evolutionarily more ancient than previously thought.

Young women seem to be less drawn to degrees in science or technology. But what is putting them off? A sociological study at UZH has revealed that outdated gender stereotypes - such as supposed differences in analytical thinking - play a major role.

Mouse lemurs give birth to their offspring during the 5-month rainy season and lay down a fat cushion to survive the dry season when food is scarce. But what happens when the rainy season becomes drier and the dry season warmer? Researchers at the German Primate Center - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research and the University of Zurich show that climate changes destabilise mouse lemur populations and increase the risk of extinction.

The 1900/01 Boxer Rebellion in China resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 people, massive damage to cultural heritage in Beijing and countless looted objects that eventually ended up in museums and collections across the West. A new workspace exhibition at the Ethnographic Museum at the University of Zurich now shines a light on objects that may have been looted from China. How should these objects be dealt with, and what significance do they have for Chinese people today?

Reduced biodiversity affects the stability of the entire ecosystem. A long-term experiment now shows that grassland plant communities with multiple species need about 10 years to adjust to each other and produce an even amount of biomass again.

The newly established Postdoc Team Award allows UZH to recognize outstanding interdisciplinary research. The inaugural award has gone to two teams, both of which are developing innovative approaches in healthcare research, such as linking pupil size to stress resilience or exploring what tweets can reveal about our mental health.

Three new spin-offs were founded at UZH in 2022, transferring scientific findings into industry practice. The business ventures explore new perspectives in the fight against cancer, space factories to produce human tissue, and ways to accelerate the development of novel drugs.