Core Research Areas

Learn about some of the most important areas in which UZH conducts research on and with AI.

The University of Zurich has 7 faculties and over 150 departments and institutes making it the largest and most diverse comprehensive university in Switzerland. 

This broad expertise on different domains makes the UZH a unique place to tackle complex, interdisciplinary topics like AI. 

UZH is world-renowned for its research on autonomous systems, particularly in aerial robotics, drone navigation, and autonomous driving. It uniquely combines technical innovation with legal and ethical research, allowing it to tackle complex challenges such as safety, explainability, and accountability in autonomous technologies. This convergence of disciplines makes UZH one of the few places globally where AI, robotics, law, and ethics actively shape autonomous mobility.

Watch how an AI developed at the UZH defeats World Champion Drone racers on YouTube: https://youtu.be/fBiataDpGIo

UZH is internationally recognized for its work on ethical, trustworthy AI. It brings together scholars from philosophy, law, medicine, and computer science to study bias, transparency, fairness, and human impact. Thanks to its academic breadth and the cross-faculty Digital Society Initiative (DSI), UZH is a European leader in building AI that serves society responsibly.

UZH houses Switzerland’s largest and most prestigious Faculty of Law, with a long-standing tradition of legal scholarship and influence in national policymaking. Leveraging this academic strength, UZH leads research on how AI interacts with legal systems—from regulation and liability to algorithmic decision-making and justice. Its interdisciplinary setup enables cutting-edge work on the legal frameworks needed to govern AI in society.

UZH collaborates closely with leading medical institutions such as University Hospital Zurich, Balgrist University Hospital, and Children’s Hospital Zurich to apply AI in real-world clinical settings. Research covers medical imaging, diagnostics, patient data modeling, and treatment prediction. With direct access to anonymized patient data and interdisciplinary clinical teams, UZH is a driving force in safe, human-centered medical AI.

From climate science to conservation, UZH applies AI to understand and protect natural systems. Researchers use machine learning to analyze satellite data, track biodiversity, model land use, and forecast ecological change. As a university with a strong faculty of science and access to global field data, UZH is shaping the role of AI in addressing our planet’s most urgent environmental challenges.

UZH’s Department of Computational Linguistics is among Europe’s most respected, with deep expertise in multilingual language processing and historical linguistics. Algorithms developed at UZH are powering real-world applications in large-scale language models used by today’s AI leaders. UZH research advances natural language understanding across low-resource, domain-specific, and ethically sensitive contexts.

How AI transforms work is a key focus at UZH, where researchers study automation, digital productivity, and workplace behavior. UZH is a national leader in digitalization research, driven in part by the Digital Society Initiative (DSI). With strengths in psychology, economics, and business studies, UZH explores how AI can support workers, optimize collaboration, and reshape organizations—while keeping people at the center.