2023 was an important year for the SCTO, with the definition of the next funding period strategy, the related application for funds to the State Secretariate for Education Research and Innovation (SERI), and an evaluation from the Swiss Science Council. Their recommendations will serve as basis for the fund’s allocation for 2025–2028 to research infrastructures at the end of 2024.
During 2023, some structural changes at the Executive Office were considered necessary to meet the challenges of the new funding period. While there is an increasing need to strategically position the SCTO in Switzerland’s research landscape and align with other national stakeholders, coordinative tasks at the level of the SCTO Platforms have decreased. The balance between centralised and decentralised tasks at the level of the Executive Office and the Clinical Trial Units has been readjusted; some operative tasks, such as leading the SCTO’s Education Platform, have been shifted to the CTUs.
At the governance level, the following changes took place in the Steering Board in 2023:
- Prof. Alexandra Calmy, Hôpitaux Universitaires Genève, was elected as a new Steering Board member. She succeeded Prof. Jérôme Pugin, who left the Steering Board as of 1 November 2023.
- Prof. Thomas Geiser, Inselspital (Universitätsspital Bern), has stepped down from the Steering Board at the end of 2023. Dr Danielle Krebs took over his position in an interim capacity.
- Prof. Michele Ghielmini, Ente Ospedaliero Cantonale Ticino (EOC), left the Steering Board as of 1 September 2023. He was replaced by Prof. Alessandro Ceschi.
2024 will be an important year for the SCTO, with the Swiss National Science Foundation’s (SNSF’s) evaluation process of research infrastructures, the end of the current funding period, and preparations for setting off towards new goals and horizons in 2025–2028. Increased collaboration with other research infrastructures (including in the data field) and non-university hospitals as well as the systematic implementation of research on research (meta-research) are some of the new areas the SCTO will prepare to develop in the upcoming funding period.