Dr. Rudolf Gerber has directed and moulded Bern University of Applied Sciences BFH for the past seven-and-a-half years. His period of office coincided, for instance, with the implementation of the Bologna Reform by establishing 21 Master degree programmes, the launch of the research initiative, the cantonalisation of the Swiss College of Agriculture SHL on 1 January 2012, and centralisation of the administrative support functions. Dr. Rudolf Gerber is also regarded as the initiator and driving force behind the Biel/Bienne Campus project.

In Prof. Dr. Herbert Binggeli, BFH is gaining a senior executive with great experience in the educational sector. With his long-standing experience in the management of a large complex educational institution and his seat on the University Board, he possesses an intimate knowledge of the strategic challenges facing BFH.

BFH will have to assert itself in an increasingly competitive market environment. Thanks to his high level of expertise in the educational sector, his good connections to the university community, the vocational education and political spheres, and his experience with change processes, Herbert Binggeli will effectively support the University Executive Board in facing up to these challenges. One of the key projects in the upcoming years is the setting up of the Biel/Bienne Campus, where the technical disciplines will be concentrated in the future. Further challenges include the implementation of the Federal Act on Funding and Coordination of the Higher Education Sector (HFKG) against a backdrop of the canton’s increasingly tighter budget, and the introduction of the contribution system. Drawing on his expertise, Prof. Dr. Herbert Binggeli will actively promote this transformation.

Today BFH presented its new brand presentation at its Annual Press Conference. The distinctive umbrella brand and holistic brand image send out high-impact signals. The compact logo gives BFH a memorable face. The abbreviation, commonly used in conversation, becomes the university trademark.

The new presentation will be launched gradually. This in acceptance of the fact that both the old and new look will be used concurrently during the transitional period of around two years.

Already seen the BFH film? If not, we recommend that you watch the film for an entertaining glimpse of the new presentation.

BFH film

René Graf, born in 1974, grew up bilingually, and graduated from the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) with a degree in materials engineering. He completed his diploma in the nanotechnology sector at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in Sydney. He is due to complete his Executive Master of Public Administration MPA degree programme at the University of Bern at the end of 2013.

Mr. Graf has been employed at the Department of Architecture, Wood and Civil Engineering at Bern University of Applied Sciences since 2003. As research assistant, his remit included the acquisition and management of complex research projects, and leadership of the project for developing Master degree programmes in the Wood and Civil Engineering disciplines. As Professor of Material Science he assumed responsibility for the development and teaching of building material science for the Bachelor of Arts in Architecture degree programme in 2007. Mr. Graf has headed the Research and Development Division at the AWCE since 2008, and is a member of the department management team.

Due to his long-standing experience and academic career, Mr. Graf possesses an intimate knowledge of Bern University of Applied Sciences and the department. He is a leader with a proven track record and outstanding specialist and managerial skills. Thanks to his sound experience in research and development, teaching and supra-departmental projects he has built up a wide network within Bern University of Applied Sciences, in the university community, and in industry.

René Graf will take up his new post on 1 August 2013, and succeeds Prof. Heinz Müller, long-standing Director of the AWCE and Vice-Rector of BUAS, who is entering retirement.

This time 34 students are taking part from the areas of architecture, civil engineering, construction process management, building technology, landscape planning and social sciences. The students from 16 countries come from the partner universities of applied sciences in the elop alliance originally established by Stanford University USA, ITESM Querétaro Mexico, Politecnico di Milano Italy, Polytech’Marseille France, Bauhaus Universität Weimar Germany and HES-SO Geneva. Five students from the BUAS Joint Master of Architecture degree programme are involved, as is the BUAS Social Work Department.

In five multi-disciplinary teams students draft sustainable concepts and future-focused solutions for the new Deutz Campus building at Cologne University of Applied Sciences, and develop visions for tomorrow’s world of learning.

Three weeks into the new semester the Physical Kick Off Week was held in Cologne, focusing on team and trust building, project and process planning, direct exchanges between project partners, and the development of a common vision. Back at their home universities, the teams will now develop guidelines and practical project suggestions throughout the semester, while testing cross-disciplinary drafting and planning processes by means of virtual collaboration.

In January 2013 students and coaches will meet again in Cologne for the final presentation. The students’ suggestions are intended both as contributions to the current debate in Cologne and the BUAS campus in Biel, and to highlight the issue of tomorrow’s world of learning from a cross-disciplinary viewpoint.

elop takes place annually, and will now be co-organised by alliance partner universities on a rotating basis. The aim is to create a broader base for the elop project at BUAS, and to involve other disciplines besides Social Work in the future.

*formally elope

Further information

Dr. Herbert Binggeli is to succeed Dr. Rudolf Gerber at the head of Bern University of Applied Sciences BUAS. He will take up his appointment as rector on 1 June 2013. The University Board’s choice falls on a leader of good standing in the canton with many years of experience in the educational sector. Since 2000, 54-year-old Binggeli has held his current post as director of the Commercial and Industrial Vocational College of Bern (gibb), with approx. 7,000 trainees from over 60 trades and around 1,000 students in higher vocational training. He was previously the head of gibb’s vocational baccalaureate school since 1994. Over a period of almost two decades has overseen the challenging introductory phase of the vocational baccalaureate, helping to shape its specific development in Bern canton and contributing to its federal framework curriculum. He also played a key role in the development and implementation of the college facilities strategy at gibb (concentration and reduction of gibb sites).

Following a period of strong growth – since 2006 student figures have doubled and 21 Master degree programmes have been established along with a corresponding expansion in research – BUAS is poised to enter a phase of consolidation. The main focus is on strengthening previous achievements and on national and international positioning, paired with targeted expansion of research, particularly in connection with the Master degree programmes. BUAS will have to assert itself in an increasingly competitive market environment. Thanks to his high level of expertise in the educational sector, his good connections to the university community as well as vocational education and political spheres, and his experience with change processes, Herbert Binggeli will support the University Executive Board effectively in facing up to these challenges. One of the key projects in the upcoming years is the setting up of the Biel-Bienne Campus, where the technical disciplines will be concentrated in the future. Further challenges include the implementation of the Funding and Coordination of the Higher Education Sector Act (Hochschulförderungs- und -koordinationsgesetz HFKG) against a backdrop of the canton’s increasingly tighter budget, and the introduction of the contribution system. Drawing on his expertise, Herbert Binggeli will actively promote this transformation. Through his various secondary activities in politics, in commissions and public office, he has also acquired important insights into different cultures and mindsets; an aspect that played a significant role in his election.

Dr. Herbert Binggeli studied German and English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Humanities at Bern University. He received his doctorate in 1989 with his dissertation on Max Frisch’s late work “Triptychon”. Aside from his academic studies, Dr. Herbert Binggeli attended pedagogy and didactics lectures and seminars at the Department of Teacher Education. He was awarded his diploma in 1995 on his return from several years spent in São Paulo, Brazil, where he was employed as a secondary school German and French teacher, and later as director of the Swiss School. Further periods abroad in Northern Ireland and Vienna, and various further training courses in the area of quality, the course for head teachers at the University of St. Gallen and a post graduate degree in General Management (Executive Master of Business Management) round off his academic career. Herbert Binggeli is married and has three children. He lives in Rapperswil BE.

The Erasmus Intensive Programme is funded by the EU and enables Bachelor and Master students as well as university teachers from Finland, Greece (2 universities), Sweden, Germany and Switzerland to exchange ideas and broaden their knowledge in a specialised two-week intensive course. Primary aims include:

• Promoting transnational teaching in the print and media sector by means of lectures, workshops and guided tours in the industry during which students learn about a range of topics from design development, cross and social media to the various printing processes
• Teaching students and teachers to work together in multinational groups,
• Exchanging ideas on various forms of communicating teaching content,
• Broadening personal horizons and outlook.

Further information

Dr. Magdalena Schindler Stokar was born in 1958. She studied food technology at ETH Zurich and wrote her PhD in 1986 on procedures for cleaning and making use of cheese dairy wastewater and whey for energy purposes. She also obtained a Master of Business Administration at the Institute for Management Devel-opment (IMD) in Lausanne.

Dr. Schindler has worked at the School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences HAFL (previously SHL) since 1987. She was employed as a lecturer and spearheaded the Dairy Farming degree programme until 2000. She was appointed Vice Director in 1995 and took over as Head of Diploma Courses. Since 2010 she has been the Vice Director and Head of Teaching at the HAFL and President of the Teaching Commission at Bern University of Applied Sciences.

As a member of the management team at the HAFL, she has shaped the way it has developed for many years. Dr. Schindler has highly developed leadership capabilities, as well as excellent scientific and management skills. She also has extensive experience in teaching and applied research and development. She knows the tertiary education sector very well thanks to her many years in a leadership role at the HAFL. Her activities in the teaching segment of the KFH (Rectors’ Conference of the Swiss Universities of Applied Sciences), where she worked on the universities’ framework conditions regarding education policy, also stand her in good stead. Dr. Schindler is well known in the university environment and in the food industry.

Magdalena Schindler will take up her new post on 1 May 2013 when Dr. Alfred Buess, long-standing Director of the School of Agricultural, Forest and Food Sciences retires.

It is exactly ten years ago that the ALT02 conference was held in the town of Adelboden, a famous tourist resort in the centre of the western Bernese highlands. The conference was the tenth in a series of events dedicated to the advancement of the theory and application of laser technology. The prestigious series was established by the Prokhorov General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1993. The institute was named after Nobel laureate Alexander Mikhailovich Prokhorov, who received the Nobel Prize for his research in the field of quantum electronics in 1964. This year’s ALT conference returns to the gate of the Bernese highlands – the historic city of Thun – bringing together leading scientists and researchers from all over the world.

Successful partnership since 1987
The organization of the ALT conference is only the latest event in a long and successful history of joint activities between Russia and Switzerland: Exactly 25 years ago, in 1987, a first collaboration was established between the General Physics Institute in Moscow and the Institute of Applied Physics in Bern. The collaboration aimed at exploring new ways of developing and processing laser materials. The laser material of greatest interest to the IAP at that time was erbium-doped crystal. This material made it possible to generate laser radiation in mid-infrared (i.e. at 3 micrometer) wavelength. Light of this wavelength is absorbed very efficiently within one-thousandth of a millimeter in water, and hence in human tissue; it can therefore cut tissue efficiently and very precisely at low energy and with minimum heat-affected zone. Prof. Weber, at that time head of the laser department at the IAP, was investigating the use of laser radiation in medicine. These interests coincided with the interests of Prof. Konov and Prof. Shcherbakov at the GPI, which led to fruitful joint work in the study of laser interaction with human tissue, as well as the spectroscopic analysis of laser materials, for the purpose of generating those wavelengths. This initial collaboration led, in 1996, to the start of a joint research project funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The project was a great success and institutional partnership projects followed, facilitating regular exchange visits between Russia and Switzerland. Recently, the General Physics Institute in Moscow, the Institute for Single Crystals (Ukraine) and Institute for Applied Laser, Photonics and Surface Technologies at BUAS launched a new Swiss National Science Foundation project, which is led by Prof. Valerio Romano at BUAS.

Advances in ultrashort-pulse laser technology

The present collaboration between Russia, Ukraine and Switzerland forms a continuous line of research from the activities in the past. The joint SNF project, which is due to be completed in 2012, springs from the recent interest in ultrashort-pulse laser technology. The project aims at exploring new possibilities in material processing with ultrashort pulses required for applications in photonics, data storage, micro-mechanical and micro-optical devices. Ultrashort laser pulses, for example, can be used to produce inscribed «wires» inside diamond for electronic or photonic applications.
For this purpose, a variety of advanced optical materials including diamond, sapphire, lithium niobate, and nanocrystalline films of silicon carbide (nc-SiC) are currently studied. A particular goal of each potential application is to demonstrate how much the material properties can be changed by only ‹small› changes induced by ultrashort pulses in micrometer- and submicrometer-sized regions of transparent materials.
Joint research activities in the project focus on the synthesis of nanocrystalline SiC films, the investigation of structure and optical properties, and laser modification of crystals and thin films.
Ultrashort-pulse laser technology will be the subject of intense interest in the research community for a long time to come. And there is little doubt that the Russian-Swiss partnership will continue to be at the forefront of these developments.

Text: Patrick Studer

Source: hitech 2/2012, p 12-13

The consecutive master degree programme in Business Information Technology is a joint offering by Bern University of Applied Sciences, Lucerne University of Applied Sciences, St. Gallen University of Applied Sciences and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences School of Management and Law in Winterthur. The four universities of applied sciences aim to counteract the acute shortage of skilled personnel in the economics and information technology sectors through the Master of Science in Business Information Technology. Following assessments, the Federal Department of Economic Affairs has approved the degree programme. The degree programme will begin in September 2012.

Interface between information technology and business administration
The extra-occupational Master studies in Business Information Technology impart sound skills in IT manage-ment, strategic and operational process management, as well as project and change management. It also includes specialisation in knowledge and information management, IT governance and risk and compliance. The programme is aimed at people interested who have a Bachelor degree in Business Information Technology, a Bachelor degree in Business Administration with specialisation in Business Information Technology or a related degree programme. Being both scientifically based and with a practical approach, the degree programme creates the foundations for a successful career in the ICT industry, in management consultancy or in the organisational and IT sectors of companies.

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