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The Swiss Young Academy has admitted six new members from a wide range of disciplines. They were officially welcomed at a ceremony in Bern on 12 June 2026. No sooner had they joined than they were actively contributing to a major debate on artificial intelligence (AI) in research. One key insight emerged: AI cannot replace scientific thinking.

Emmanuel Senft has fulfilled a childhood dream: he develops and researches robots. Through the Swiss Young Academy, he works to ensure that artificial intelligence enriches scientific thinking – without replacing the process of discovery itself. And to make the academic system fairer.

From graphic design to bioengineering, Swiss Young Academy speaker Nawal Kinany has had a unique career in which transdisciplinarity isn't a concept, but a way of experiencing and sharing science.

As a child, Julia Venturini used to gaze at the night sky over Uruguay with her grandfather. Today, she simulates planet formation on computer clusters and chases planets with CHEOPS. Together with the Young Academy, she has conducted a survey on the reasons why young people leave an academic career. One of her findings was that women still have to fight harder.

Innovative Open Research Data practices impressively demonstrated: The project team “Choice of Law Dataverse” (University of Lucerne) and James Runnalls (Eawag) are this year’s winners of the Swiss National Prize for Open Research Data (ORD Prize). Each prize is endowed with 10,000 Swiss francs.

Philosopher and educationalist Lerato Posholi – a member of the Young Academy – wants to incorporate non-European thinking more strongly into the global discourse. In this portrait, she talks about the place of African ideas, her own path and the question of what is philosophical.

She looks for change in her research: Clara Zemp is Professor of Conservation Biology at the University of Neuchâtel – and seeks dialogue across disciplines. At the Swiss Young Academy, she finds space to rethink science and reflect on her social role as a scientist.

At the meeting of the Young Academies of Europe in Bern, Yves Flückiger, President of the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences, and Lucas Müller, former speaker of the Swiss Young Academy, talk about science diplomacy, uncertain career paths and the question of how the scientific system can be networked across Europe and made fit for the future.