Prof Stefano Bassetti is Head of the Division of Internal Medicine at University Hospital Basel and a professor of internal medicine at the University of Basel. Within the frame of this project, he has clinical oversight of the COVID patient ward. Prof Bassetti graduated in medicine from the University of Zürich, where he was also a doctoral researcher in the Institute for Immunology and Virology. He started his clinical training as a resident in paediatrics at La Carità hospital in Locarno and was then a resident and fellow in internal medicine and infectious diseases in Lugano, Lucerne and University Hospital Basel. He worked for two years as an infectious diseases research fellow at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, USA, on vascular catheter-related infections and the airborne transmission of Staphylococcus aureus and then returned to University Hospital Basel as a senior physician, first in internal medicine and then in infectious diseases. From 2006 to 2014, he was Head of the Department of Medicine at the Cantonal Hospital of Olten. He is a board certified specialist in internal medicine and infectious diseases and is actively involved in medical education and clinical training on a national and European level as Chair of the Board of Postgraduate Education of the Swiss Society of General Internal Medicine, a member of the Board of the Swiss Institute for Postgraduate and Continuing Education in Medicine (SIWF) and a Swiss representative in the European Federation of Internal Medicine. His main research focus is on clinical projects aimed at improving diagnostics and treatment, particularly in hospitalized multimorbid patients, and on the field of infectious diseases.