RESC welcomes newly elected members Dr. Mohamed Bouri, Prof. Franziska Felder, Prof. Patrick Freund, Prof. Inge Herrmann and Prof. Carla Sabariego
ETH Zurich’s Competence Centre for Rehabilitation Engineering and Science (RESC) is pleased to welcome Mohamed Bouri, Franziska Felder, Patrick Freund, Inge Herrmann and Carla Sabariego as new members.
Dr. Mohamed Bouri
Mohamed Bouri is a distinguished roboticist and the leader of the EPFL research group REHAssist (Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics). He earned his PhD in 1997 from INSA-Lyon, France. Dr. Bouri is renowned for his expertise in the development and control of advanced robotic systems, particularly in the field of medical robotics. His work primarily revolves around rehabilitation robotics, lower limb exoskeletons, and surgical applications. He holds prominent positions as a board member of the International Consortium on Rehabilitation Robotics (ICORR) and the Swiss Cobotics Competence Center (S3C).
Prof. Franziska Felder
Franziska Felder studied special education, economics, and film studies at the University of Zurich and earned her PhD in 2012 on inclusion and justice for people with disabilities. She has completed research stays at University College London, the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and the University of Birmingham. She is currently co-leading an SNSF project on the history of the Swiss Disability Rights Movement (2024-2028).
Prof. Patrick Freund
Patrick Freund is the head of the Spinal Cord Injury Center at Balgrist University Hospital and obtained his doctorate in biology (Fribourg) in 2008 and in medicine (Zurich) in 2014. In 2018, he was awarded the SNSF Eccellenza Professorship at the University of Zurich. In 2020 Patrick was awarded the Schellenberg Prize. In 2023, he became ad personam Professor of Experimental Imaging of the Spinal Cord at the University of Zurich. Patrick Freund also holds an Honorary Professorship at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at Queen Sqaure UCL Institute of Neurology and Honorary Senior Scientist at the Department of Neurophysics at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. Patrick Freund is a leader in the assessment of spinal cord injury beyond clinical and neurophysiological measures using neuroimaging. In particular, he is involved in the multimodal assessment of functional and structural changes throughout the central nervous system caused by focal lesions of the spinal cord.
Prof. Inge Herrmann
Inge Herrmann is a chemical engineer with additional training in (pre)clinical research. After graduating with a PhD from ETH Zurich, she underwent further training at the University Hospital Zurich (USZ), the University of Illinois (US) and the Imperial College London (UK). Since 2015, she is heading a research group at Empa specialized on nanoscale materials and devices for healthcare. In 2019, Inge Herrmann joined the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (D-MAVT) at ETH Zurich where she is heading the Nanoparticle Systems Engineering Lab. In 2023, she got appointed as assistant professor (tenure track) for musculoskeletal soft tissue research at University of Zurich and is heading the Ingenuity Lab at University Hospital Balgrist, which designs and develops conceptionally novel solutions for precision medicine based on an interdisciplinary design-thinking approach. She is an expert in nanoparticle synthesis and characterization, spectromicroscopy and translational nanomedicine.
Prof. Carla Sabariego
Carla Sabariego is a clinical psychologist with a PhD in public health and epidemiology. She worked for 15 years at the Institute for Public Health at the Medical Faculty of the LMU Munich and acted for over 8 years as a WHO consultant. Professor Sabariego was part of the working group responsible for the development, pilot testing and implementation of the WHO Model Disability Survey. Her current research is rooted in implementation science and health policy and systems research and focuses mainly on strengthening rehabilitation in health systems to contribute to healthy ageing of the general population and of people with spinal cord injury. She has an extensive track record of grant preparation and participation in large projects funded by the European Commission, particularly in the field of mental health, mostly in implementation science roles, and a very wide network of international collaborators in Europe and beyond.