SCFA is the board representing the Swiss professional astronomers. It is made essentially of the directors of the various Swiss astronomical institutes.

Image: ESO

CHAPS – College of Helvetic Astronomy Professors

The College of Helvetic Astronomy ProfessorS (CHAPS) is the astronomy counterpart of the CHIPP Board in particle physics. It can be seen as a consultative, advisory body of the SCFA without being an independent legal entity.

The membership of CHAPS was defined at the CHAPS meeting of 18 January 2013 as: "CHAPS members are professors with a permanent position in Switzerland. This includes titular professors but excludes, e.g., SNSF and ERC professors." This has been confirmed at the CHAPS meeting of 29 September 2023, as well as the practice to include tenure-track assistant professors. In principle a professor is either a member of the CHIPP Board or of CHAPS, but not of both.

CHAPS Members

University of Basel

  • Stefan Antusch

University of Bern

1. Physikalisches Institut

  • Yann Alibert
  • Willy Benz
  • Brice-Olivier Demory
  • Ingo Leya
  • Christoph Mordasini
  • Nicolas Thomas
  • Marek Tulej
  • Peter Wurz

2. Astronomisches Institut

  • Adrian Jaeggi
  • Thomas Schildknecht

3. ISSI

  • Maurizio Falanga

University of Geneva

  • Émeline Bolmont
  • François Bouchy
  • Corinne Charbonnel
  • David Ehrenreich
  • Christophe Lovis
  • Georges Meynet
  • Pascal Oesch
  • Stéphane Paltani
  • Francesco Pepe
  • Daniel Schaerer
  • Damien Ségransan
  • Stéphane Udry
  • Anne Verhamme
  • Roland Walter

University of Zurich

1. Department of Physics

  • Philippe Jetzer
  • Prasenjit Saha
  • Marcelle Soares-Santos

2. Institute of Computational Science

  • Robert Feldmann
  • Ravit Helled
  • Lucio Mayer
  • Ben Moore
  • Joachim Stadel
  • Jaiyul Yoo

ETH Zurich

  • Simon Lilly
  • Sascha Quanz
  • Didier Queloz
  • Alexandre Refregier
  • Hans Martin Schmid

EPF Lausanne

  • Frédéric Courbin
  • Michaela Hirschmann
  • Pascale Jablonka
  • Jean-Paul Kneib

PMOD

  • Margit Haberreiter (as SSAA President)
  • Louise Harra

IRSOL

  • Svetlana Berdyugina

The CHIPP Board observer in CHAPS is Martin Kunz (Uni. of Geneva).

The CHAPS observer in the CHIPP Board is Lucio Mayer (Uni. of Zurich).

All members and observers of the SCFA are also invited at the CHAPS meetings.