Summer school:
Evolutionary Biology in Guarda

An international summer school in the swiss alps for Master students and early PhD students with a keen interest in evolutionary Biology. Jointly offered by the University of Basel and the ETH Zürich.  

Aerial view of the village of Guarda, Switzerland
The village of Guarda, located at 1653 meters a.s.l in the Lower Engadine. Adrian Michael, CC BY-SA 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The 2025 Evolutionary Biology in Guarda summer school will take place from:

14. - 21. June 2025 (Saturday to Saturday).

The course will start on Saturday evening at 19h and will end Friday evening (departure on Saturday morning). Only candidates will be admitted who are able to participate for the entire course period.

Purpose of the summer school

  • To learn to think more clearly and to express your ideas.
  • To gain confidence in your own ideas.
  • To discuss your ideas, reject them if necessary and to find new ones.
  • To learn how to write a grant.
  • To have a focused and sustained conversation about science, to dig deep.
  • To make the doing of science a shared pleasure.
  • To learn to interact in a team.

What happens during the summer school

  • Form working groups of 4-5 people with shared interests.
  • Make a list of things to discuss.
  • Take some time to discuss the list.
  • Faculty members will assist you and will visit groups daily.
  • Ask yourselves, what is a good research question? How can we recognise it?
  • Choose 1-2 promising questions or topics. Discuss them.
  • Write a grant proposal
  • Have it critiqued, revise it, present it in plenary.
  • All of this happens without using the internet (There is limited internet access during the course).

Faculty

  • Dr. Rosemary Grant (Princeton University, USA)
  • Dr. Peter Grant (Princeton University, USA)
  • Dr. Johanna Mappes (University of Helsinki, Finland)
  • Dr. Sebastian Bonhoeffer (ETH Zürich)
  • Dr. Dieter Ebert (University of Basel) (course organizer)

Application

Application for the 2025 Summer School is closed. Successful applicants will be informed by email.

 

Contact

  • guarda-summerschool@ethz.ch

Summer school organisation

Prof. Dr. Dieter Ebert
Professor of Zoology and Evolutionary Biology at University of Basel
  • Email
  • Website
Prof. Dr. Sebastian Bonhoeffer
Professor of Theoretical Biology at ETH Zürich
  • Email
  • Website