Prof. Heike A. Bischoff-Ferrari, DrPH is am MD with board certification in geriatric medicine, general internal medicine and rehabilitation. She holds a Master's degree and doctoral degree from the Harvard School of Public Health. After building the first Academic Clinic on Geriatric Medicine and first Chair of Geriatrics and Aging Research at the University of Zurich (2013-2024), she transitioned to the University of Basel to build the Swiss Campus for Healthy Longevity in 2025 which also serves as the headqarter of the DO-HEALTH trial and biobank. At the University of Basel, Prof. Bischoff-Ferrari also serves as the Chair of Geriatrics and leads the University Dept. of Acute Aging Medicine FELIX PLATTER.
Since 2012 she is the coordinating principal investigator of DO-HEALTH, the largest European intervention study and biobank on healthy longevity funded by the European Commission Framework 7 program - within a network of European and American universities. The aim of the trial was to investigate the individual and combined effects of three public health interventions (vitamin D, omega-3 and exercise) on the 3 metrics of aging (pheotypic aging, functional aging and biologiy of aging). In 2016, triggered by the input of the DO-HEALTH participants, she has established the first DO-HEALTH-associated university medicine consultation for healthy longevity in Switzerland.
Regarding her international engagement on advancing Healthy Longevity, she has been a board member of the Harvard working group MINDING OUR FUTURE: Healthy Aging, Food, and Lifestyle since 2020, a board member of the WHO Clinical Consortium Healthy Aging since 2022, and a board member of the Academy of Health and Lifespan Research since 2025. In 2021 Prof. Bischoff-Ferrari received a Lifetime Achievement Award on Healthy Aging from the ICFSR in Boston in 2021. In 2024 Prof. Bischoff-Ferrari was a Visiting Professor at Harvard Medical School, Marcus Institute on Aging.
Prof. Bischoff-Ferrari is experienced in building large international research networks on healthy longevity. Next to DO-HEALTH, which recruited in 5 European countries and includes a large network of European and US scientists, she coordinated from 2022 to 2024 a large team of basic, clinical and public health scientists to successfully launch the IHU-HealthAge program at the University of Toulouse, where she also served as the founding Director of the program and responsible PI of the submission of the Proposal to the French Government in 2023. In 2024, she founded, together with Prof. Tony Wyss-Coray from Stanford University, Prof. Walter Willett from Harvard School of Public Health and Prof. Joanne Ryan from Monash Universit, the Global Health Span Extension Consortium to advance validation novel biomakers of aging towards clinical application.
