Projects

Hair salons as innovative community spaces for the provision of sexual and reproductive health services to young women in Lesotho and Switzerland: a survey in collaboration with Citizen Scientists.

This project aims to increase the importance of neonatal research to families and ultimately to society.

Reporting behavior of Swiss firms on sustainability-related matters in the aftermath of the Konzernverantwortungsinitiative - Are companies complying with the new reporting requirements?

This project takes a participatory approach to researching problems associated with free-roaming cats in Switzerland. The diets of cats from the Zurich region are investigated by sequencing DNA traces from prey in cat feces. The same samples are used to investigate the prevalence of pathogens/parasites and the cat's gut microbiota, a community of microbes important for cat health.

The project investigates how affected persons (patients and their relatives) and researchers work together in health research. The goal is to understand how collaboration affects the research process and outcomes in health care.

In a partnership between the Kantonsschule Wattwil and the University of Zurich, this project enables young people to explore the oral microbiome across different generations and gain valuable experience. The scientific results are shared via modern media and the communication of complex content is practiced.

This project looks for health in the lives of physically and mentally ill, socially disadvantaged person. Does it exist? What is needed for it, when and where?

The project facilitates a transdisciplinary exchange between people with variations in sex characteristics (VSC), families, members of peer support groups and medical professionals. The aim is to improve the support and care of people with VSC in the long term and to create holistic care that also offers answers and solutions outside of medicine for non-medical questions and problems.

Participatory focus groups to develop a scientific pilot project for long-term, more sustainable viticulture in Switzerland.

The lifeworld of young people is organized in a thoroughly multilingual way. In cooperation with student researchers from the QUIMS school in Stettbach, the project explores the forms, functions and contexts of young people's multilingual writing and speaking and their perception of this multi-layered context.

An ethnological museum is transformed from a place of representation to a knowledge workshop. This project ties the collections back into the original societies and explores world knowledge together with them.

Agroecological principles such as ecologically-sustainable and socially-just management can help to overcome the manifold crises of our time - especially in cities. This project initiates a real laboratory that deals with the concept and implementation of urban agroecology in Zurich.

By analyzing Swiss newspapers, researchers and citizens together find out how the topic of "out-of-home placement of children and adolescents" was addressed and negotiated in the media in the 20th century.

In this project, people affected by Long Covid and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome identify research questions relevant to them with the support of researchers from UZH and develop a research agenda for Switzerland.

Previous research findings will be complemented by volunteer work in the city of Zurich to explore the potential of urban mini-green spaces as networks of pollinator paradises.

Development of a learning module in which students learn to obtain data on their own social media use, evaluate it, and critically reflect on their own usage behavior.

In the Peer2Peer project, a participatory approach is to be developed and tested with young people, which enables them to deal with health and development-related topics on their own responsibility.

The project investigates how science communication in museums can look like when it is not initiated by the museum staff but by the visitors.

With the participation of affected persons, relatives and professionals, this project explores the question of how it can be possible to talk about the experience of mental illness.

Based on historical data, relict populations of aquatic insects that are important for the recolonization of renatured water bodies are identified.

The project "Patient Narratives as Co-Production" researches the topic of participatory research and deals with experiences with and effects of participation.

An ethnographic study on participatory research is used to search for stories and representations in the Lucerne Rigi communities of Greppen, Vitznau and Weggis that have so far been missing.

Private garden owners, farmers and other interested parties investigate the soil life with the help of buried underpants throughout Switzerland and thus explore the biodiversity in the soil.

With the help of interested citizens, a database for the as yet unedited letters from the Bullinger correspondence from 1548 onwards was set up and made available to researchers.

Using a participatory approach, the first steps towards a "Züri begrünt" web app are initiated, a simple tool for the realization of small and larger greening projects with the aim of improving the urban climate and quality of life.

App'Ailes d'Air plans to equip a network of paragliders with low-cost, open-source instruments to measure atmospheric and air pollution parameters.

Through participatory action research with young people, their parents, teachers and pediatricians, opportunities, risks and new ways of dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic will be explored.

This project is about the implementation and analysis of the first health questionnaire in Switzerland co-designed by people with MS.

Outdoor athletes are involved in the collection of measurement data to enable better forecasting.

An online storytelling initiative that documents and shares online stories of cancer survivors around the world.

How can the theological language and action skills of volunteer church leaders be fostered so that church leadership in partnership can be realized?

Using participatory approaches to reduce knowledge gaps about the situations of refugee children and youth, for a diverse, public, and practice-based discussion.

What are environmental interests and needs of the citizens of Zurich? Citizens' perspective on environmental aspects of urban development in Zurich.

The inhabitants of the city of Winterthur discuss their experienced quality of life in a virtual process. Future scenarios are then designed in a participatory manner and measures are developed to achieve the target system.

Citizen Science for monitoring climate impacts and achieving climate resilience.

Supporting sustainable institutional changes to promote Citizen Science in science and technology.

Establishing Citizen Science hubs in European research performing and funding organisations to drive institutional change and ground responsible research and innovation in society.

Investigating innovative pulse and cereal-based food fermentations together with the health effects and consumer perception of novel fermented foods.

New form of governance in societal transition for healthy lifestyle.

We spend most of our time at home, at school, at the office, or in other indoor environments. What do we know about the quality of the air we breathe in these places and how it affects our health and well-being? The "Know the air you breathe" project wants to explore this together with citizens.

This project helps to optimize toxic speech detection algorithms which use machine learning and sentiment analysis.

Bündner Kupfer is a research project from the University of Zurich and the Archaeological Service of the Canton of Grisons. In their blog, they publish archaeological and scientific data collected by archaeologists and laymen.

"The Outbreak: Co-Designing a Graphic Novel on Pandemics and Bioethics." aims at documenting, illustrating and communicating bioethical concepts that have emerged in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to better prepare ourselves for similar situations that are bound to occur in the future.

TheUniversity Research Priority Programs (URPP) at the University of Zurich explores the decision to step into parenthood: its legal, medical, and social conditions as well as its consequences for the individual, the family, society, and the economy. Following a co-designed Citizen Science approach, the project involves citizens in various steps in the research process.

At the University Research Priority Program (URPP) Dynamics of Healthy Aging, researchers examine the stabilisation of psychological health and quality of life at low, intermediate and high levels of functioning from middle adulthood to advanced old age.

CrowdWater is a Citizen Science project to collect hydrological data. The goal is to develop a cheap and easy to use method of data collection that can be used to predict floods and low flow.

Weasels are under increasing pressure in Switzerland. Their habitat is becoming smaller and observations of these elusive animals are becoming increasingly rare. As predators, however, weasels provide important information on the condition of the entire ecosystem. We therefore use camera traps to investigate the occurrence of weasels and their prey in the Swiss Midlands. Dedicated Citizen Scientists helped evaluating these videos so that their movements can be monitored.

The purpose of MitrendS is to discover new information about symptoms and physical limitations in patients with Multiple Sclerosis. In the citizen science part of the project, healthy people can participate and collect baseline and comparative data by using a tablet app designed for this purpose.

As part of a linguistic research project about 100 years ago, 40 sentences were translated from standard German into the local dialects of Switzerland. However, this data has never been evaluated. The Wenker project therefore aims to transcribe the approximately 1700 handwritten Wenker sheets as well as to translate the 40 Wenker sentences into today’s dialects.

Hate Speech in the new media are on everyone's lips at the moment. But are they also used in private correspondence? The project wanted to find out using WhatsApp texts provided by the public.

The project team behind the Snake ID Challenge works on creating tools that anyone can use to identify snakes. The goal is to help clinicians better treat snakebite cases, educate people, and at the same time improve snake conservation and help scientists discover new species.

The "Swiss Cause of Health Cohort" is initiated by swiss scientists, who make their personal data available to pave the way for superior personalized medicine in Switzerland. A secure database with unique governance structure (non-profit citizen-controlled MIDATA cooperative) allows individuals to control their own data.