Director

Prof. Milo Puhan studied medicine at the University of Zurich. After working as an internal medicine resident at the Zurich Höhenklinik in Wald (Dr. O. Brändli), Switzerland and as a Research Fellow at the University of Zurich’s Horten Center (Prof. J. Steurer), he earned a PhD at the University of Amsterdam in 2006 (Prof. P. Bossuyt). Immediately following, Prof. Puhan was a PROSPER fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation. From 2008 to 2012, he was a tenure track Associate Professor in the Department of Epidemiology of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, USA. Since 2013 he serves as chair of Epidemiology and Public Health at the University of Zurich and as director of the EBPI.

Milo Puhan’s main research interest are in prevention and management of chronic diseases and in the development of tools to support preference-sensitive health care. He is currently principal investigator of the Swiss MS Registry, and of several other studies. In 2020, Milo Puhan together with other colleagues from SSPH+ founded and currently coordinated the Corona Immunitas Initiative that united Swiss national efforts to determine the SARS-CoV-2 immunity of the general population, school schildren as well as of vulnerable population groups and specific professional groups at high risk of infection.

Until 2023, Milo Puhan was the president of the National Research Program 74 Smarter Health Care of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Currently, he serves as president of the Swiss School of Public Health and directs the PhD program in Epidemiology & Biostatistics of the Life Science Zurich Graduate School.

In 2014, he received the COPD Research Award of the European Respiratory Society and in 2017, he was awarded the prestigious Ig Nobel Prize for his work on the didgeridoo for treating obstructive sleep apnea and snoring.