Prof. em. Dr. Geneviève Défago

Geneviève Défago was lecturer in phytopathology at the Institute of Plant Sciences in the discipline of phytomedicine. She is the director of interuniversity and interdisciplinary projects devoted to biological control and biosafety. In 1990 she was awarded the title of Professor. She retired end of July 2006.

Prof. Défago was born on July 18, 1942 and comes from Val d-Illiez VS. She studied natural sciences at the University of Lausanne and at the ETH Zurich where her major field of study was physiological plant pathology. Her doctoral dissertation on the taxonomy of hyphomycetes was awarded the ETH Zurich silver medal in 1967. Following a postdoc period at the Prairie Regional Laboratory in Saskatoon, Canada, she returned to Zurich in 1969 as head of the scientific staff at the Institute for Special Botany. In 1977 she received the venia legendi in the Department of Natural Sciences. She teaches molecular and applied phytopathology. Her research is directed chiefly towards the mechanisms and regulation that allow beneficial bacteria to protect plant against diseases caused by soil-borne pathogenic fungi. A main emphasis was the evaluation of the risks involved in the application of transgenic organisms. Another focal point concerned the fundamentals of the biological control of bindweeds with pathogenic fungi.

Prof. Défago was a founding member and the first president of the Swiss Society for Phytomedicine.