Prof Nicole Probst Hensch is a member of the Board of Directors of the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH) and heads the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, the institute’s largest research department. She and her research team are conducting exposome science. They are renowned experts in implementing and maintaining large citizen cohorts and biobanks, both nationally in Switzerland and globally in different low- and middle-income countries. They apply exposure measurements and models as well as prospectively obtained biological samples and MRI images in order to improve the causal understanding of pathways from risk patterns (consisting of genetic and other personal, lifestyle, chemical and environmental factors) to ageing and non-communicable disease occurrence (asthma, COPD, diabetes, CVD, mental disorders) over the lifecourse.

Prof Probst Hensch has a PhD in pharmaceutical sciences from the University of Basel in Switzerland and a PhD in epidemiology from UCLA, Los Angeles, USA. She is a faculty member of the Swiss School of Public Health (SSPH+) and serves on numerous scientific and public health committees in Switzerland. She is a member of the scientific advisory board for the German National Cohort and received the canton of Basel-Stadt’s science award for her outstanding work in cohort and biobank science.