Board of Trustees
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Dr. iur. Raphael Widmer-Kaufmann
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Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Stark
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Martin Gerber
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Colonel Dr. Andres Kunz
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Prof. Dr. Viktor Sigrist
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Dr. Martin Risch
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Joachim Schoss
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Prof. Dr. Christian Hildebrand
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Dr. Stephanie Schoss
Dr. iur. Raphael Widmer-Kaufmann (president of the board of trustees)
“per aspera ad astra”
Raphael Widmer-Kaufmann is lawyer and public notary with a specialisation in aviation and space law. He studied at the University of St.Gallen, where he completed his doctorate on the legal proceedings following an aircraft accident and on Just Culture. Raphael Widmer-Kaufmann is fellow of the HSG Center for Aviation and Space Competence (HSG-CFAC) and member of the board of the Foundation for Aviation Competence (FFAC). Besides this, he holds various mandates in the aviation industry and works as flight instructor and freelance pilot on a PC12.
Contact: raphael.widmer@spacevalley.ch
Prof. Dr. Elisabeth Stark
"Don’t ever make decisions based on fear. Make decisions based on hope and possibility.” (Michelle Obama)
Elisabeth Stark holds a chair of Romance linguistics at Zurich (UZH), after having been Full Professor for Romance linguistics and Dean of Studies (2008) at the Freie Universität Berlin (2004–2008). Her core interests are the comparative morphosyntax of Romance nominals and micro-variation in French (register variation), both in a synchronic and diachronic perspective and integrating variationist and formal approaches to language. She directed several large interdisciplinary research projects and was responsible at UZH for setting up
the National Research Infrastructure «Linguistic Research Infrastructure (LiRI)» and the University Research Priority Program «Language and Space». She was elected as a member of Academia.net in 2012. From February 2021 onwards, she serves as the Vice President Research at the University of Zurich, where she is responsible for internal and external research funding, early career researchers, national (swissuniversities) and international (Una Europa, LERU, U21) research networks, large infrastructures, including animal facilities, and innovation. She serves as an international strategic advisor to several European universities and was recently elected the first president of the newly founded
Delegates Assembly of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Contact: elisabeth.stark@spacevalley.ch
Martin Gerber
“Heavier than air flying machines are impossible.” (Lord Kelvin, 1895)
Martin is a passionate pilot, engineer, and project manager with extensive experience across both military and civil aviation. He has been an airline pilot since more than ten years, including five years as a technical pilot on the Airbus A320 fleet with Swiss International Air Lines. His military aviation career began in 1999 with the Swiss Air Force, where he currently serves as a reservist flying the Super Puma helicopter. In 2016, Martin co-founded Swiss SkyLab, an organisation dedicated to aerospace research and flight testing. As a project manager and solution architect, he works on different national and international applied research projects. These include the development of pilot assistance functions for improved aircraft energy management, novel air traffic management solutions and advancements in aviation weather technology. Martin also shares his expertise as a guest lecturer on aircraft performance at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. Before his current endeavours, Martin served as a research helicopter pilot at the German Aerospace Center (DLR), where he conducted scientific flight tests. From 2007 to 2012, he held a senior project management
role at Thales, responsible for the development and delivery of two full-flight helicopter simulators for the Swiss Air Force. Martin holds a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich and has accumulated over 6,500 flying hours on more than 25 different types of fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters.
Contact: martin.gerber@skylab-aerospace.com
Colonel Dr. Andres Kunz
Colonel Dr. med. Andres Kunz has been leading the Aeromedical Institute of the Air Force (FAI) as Director and Chief FAI since 2010. In this role, he holds overall operational and professional responsibility for the FAI and is ultimately responsible for all aeromedical and aviation psychological matters and decisions of the Swiss Military Aviation. As a direct subordinate of the Air Force Commander, he is a member of the Commander's report, the Flight Safety Board, and other leadership and expert committees of the Air Force. In addition to the operational and professional development of the FAI, Dr. Kunz's work focuses on addressing special issues in aviation, research, and the flight physiological training of flying and parachuting personnel. A particularly fascinating aspect is the hypoxia training for pilots, parachute scouts, and other specialist groups, whether hypobaric in the FAI's decompression chamber or normobaric in the Air Force simulators. Given that hypoxia and unexplained physiological events are more relevant than ever in both military and civilian aviation, they form a special research focus for Colonel Kunz along with other topics on human performance. For Andres "Andi" Kunz, interdisciplinarity, utilizing and creating new opportunities, as well as passion and enthusiasm, are not only keys to success but also the daily lived culture of the FAI, the Air Force, and the Center for Space and Aviation.
Contact: andres.kunz@spacevalley.ch
Prof. Dr. Viktor Sigrist
"There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." (Albert Einstein)
Viktor Sigrist was born in 1960 and grew up in Lucerne. He began his studies with training as a civil engineer at HTL, continued at ETH Zurich, and graduated with a diploma in 1988. He gained his first professional experience as a structural engineer during and after his studies in engineering offices in Lucerne and Zurich, and at an international tensioning system company in Bern. At the end of 1990, he returned to ETH Zurich, where he worked at the Institute for Structural Analysis and Construction and earned his Dr. sc. techn. degree. He then participated in an engineering firm and took over the office management in Lucerne. In 2002, he was appointed professor at the Technical University of Hamburg (TUHH), where he headed the Institute for Structural Concrete until 2015 and served as Vice President for University Structural Development from 2012. Since March 2015, he has been living back in Switzerland and is the Director of the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts – School of Engineering & Architecture (HSLU T&A), which, with the Biotechnology Space Support Center (Biotesc) on behalf of the European Space Agency (ESA), serves as a User Support and Operations Center (USOC) supporting missions and assisting scientists in conducting biological and biomedical experiments.
Contact: viktor.sigrist@hslu.ch
Dr. Martin Risch
“There's no such thing as can't. We are here to find solutions."
Dr. med. Martin Risch, born in 1971, is a citizen of both Liechtenstein and Switzerland. His career began with medical studies and a doctorate from the University of Bern, leading to various training positions in St. Gallen (IKCH), Zurich (AKI and IMM), and Lucerne (IMM), specializing in laboratory medical analytics FAMH. He also specialized in Medical Microbiology and holds a professional license to practice medicine. In 2006, he joined his family's business, Dr. Risch, where he held various leadership roles until its sale to Sonic Suisse in 2024. His role as CEO during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic brought national and international attention to the company. He currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer for Sonic Suisse, managing the Zurich and Eastern Switzerland regions, and since 2011, has been leading the central laboratory at the Kantonsspital Chur, now as Chief Medical Officer. Martin Risch was named Entrepreneur of the Year in Liechtenstein in 2017 alongside his brother Lorenz. His ongoing interests include the development of modern laboratories with new technologies, automation, measurement techniques, digitalization, and improvements in transportation and logistics, particularly in drone technology. He has been actively involved in various professional committees in Switzerland and Liechtenstein, focusing on quality, regulatory affairs, and education and mobility. His extensive contributions are reflected in numerous publications (ORCID 0000-0003-4587-5639).
Contact: martin.risch@risch.ch
Joachim Schoss
“Trust, believe, and never give up.”
Joachim Schoss, born in 1963, has been an entrepreneur for 35 years. He was the founding CEO of Scout24 and is currently a co-founder and Chairman of EarthGuard.space, and a co-founder and President of gaialogic.ai. Joachim believes that space is one of the major areas of innovation and growth in the 21st century, offering significant future prospects for the economy and humanity. Since selling Scout24, he has been increasingly active as a supervisory and administrative board member, for example, with the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group, NZZ, two banks, and several startups. His heart belongs to philanthropy—such as being the founder and president of the board of trustees of EnableMe—and of course, to his wife and children. He lives in Switzerland and New Zealand.
Contact: joachim@schoss.com
Prof. Dr. Christian Hildebrand
Christian Hildebrand is Full Professor of Marketing Analytics and Director of the Institute of Behavioral Science and Technology (IBT) at the University of St. Gallen. He had doctoral and post-doctoral visits at Stanford University, Duke University, and the University of Michigan.
His work is at the intersection of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and consumer decision making, and explores how new technologies change how people think, act, and make decisions. His research focuses on understanding and optimizing consumer-firm interfaces with an emphasis on digital voice assistants, chatbots, and mobile devices. His research combines classic and novel methodologies from large-scale field experiments to feature-extraction from voice, image, and text data.
His research has been published in leading academic and practitioner-oriented journals at the intersection of marketing and information systems such as Information Systems Research, Journal of Management Information Systems, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Marketing Letters, and Harvard Business Review. His work received various research awards including the “Rigor and Relevance Award” of the Swiss Academy of Marketing Science, has been funded by major public and private institutions, and made accessible for the general public through practitioner-oriented special issues such as “The Machine Age of Marketing” of the NIM Marketing Intelligence Review.
He teaches courses at the Master, PhD, and Executive level, specializing in Machine Learning for Marketers, Web Data & Digital Analytics, Smart Data for Executives, and Computational Implementation of Experiments. He is frequently working with corporations across industries from online retail and consumer electronics to automotive and the financial industry.
As an avid trail runner, climber, and ski mountaineer, you can find Christian ascending one of Switzerland’s many peaks in the summer or searching for fresh powder in the winter.
Contact: christian.hildebrand@unisg.ch
Dr. Stephanie Schoss
Don’t wait for the future. Create it!
Dr. Stephanie Schoss is the Director of the Competence Center for Top Team Research at the University of St. Gallen with a research and teaching focus on leadership, teams, resilience, collaboration and conflict management, with an interdisciplinary approach between business, psychology and neuroscience. She has been responsible for building and running leadership and management programmes for political and business leaders at the University of St. Gallen that have educated Switzerland’s most senior leaders. Besides her academic life, Stephanie has been an entrepreneur for 20 years. Her latest company GaiaLogic is an European Artificial General Intelligence company that tries to solve Humanity’s biggest challenges with a holistic, reflective A.I. that reduces biases and is able to generate transformative solutions. Besides her professional life, Stephanie is a passionate private, commercial and seaplane pilot and a dedicated mother of 4 children and 4 step children and lives part of the year in New Zealand with her family which she considers the family sanctuary.
Contact: stephanie@schoss.com
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