Location
The University of Geneva is located in several districts in the eastern part of the city and in the nearby city of Carouge (on the left bank of the Lake Léman and the Rhône), and the different buildings are sometimes very distant from each other (the Battelle buildings are for instance more than three kilometers away from the Bastions). The oldest building (1559) is the Collège Calvin, and is no longer a university building. Lectures are given in six different main locations, Les Bastions, Uni Dufour, Sciences I, II and III, Uni Mail and Uni Pignon, Centre Médical Universitaire (CMU), and Battelle; as well as in several other locations.
Uni Bastions
Built between 1868 and 1871, Uni Bastions is the symbol of Geneva's academic life. It is located in the middle of a park and is host to the faculty of Protestant Theology and to the Faculty of Arts.
Uni Dufour
Its architecture was inspired by Le Corbusier. It hosts the Rectorat and the administration of the university.
Uni Mail
It is Switzerland's biggest building dedicated to social sciences. It currently hosts the Faculty of Law, of Economics and Management, of Psychology and Education and the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting.
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Centre Medical Universitaire
Home to the Faculty of Medicine as well as the departments of fundamental and clinical medical research, it is situated in the neighborhood of La Cluse, opposite to of the Hôpitaux Universitaires de Geneve (HUG) (Geneva University Hospitals). The construction of this large-scale medical and academic complex was started in 1970, halted in 1989 and the 6th phase of the project was finished in 2017, and it is now composed of 5 underground levels and 12 above-ground levels. The building now houses the École romande de pharmacie, the Clinique Universitaire de Medecine Dentaire (CUMD) numerous laboratories, facilities for clinical development and research, inter-faculty workspaces, an animal facility and a medical simulation centre. In addition, it also contains a daycare center, several lecture theatres, a cafeteria, communal areas, individual and shared office spaces necessary to house technical equipment, provide storage, and accommodate parking.
Research
The key sectors of research at the University of Geneva are sciences (molecular biology, bio-informatics, etc.), elementary physics, astrophysics, economics, social sciences, psychology, chemistry, biochemistry and biophysics.
UNIGE is home to six national research centers: in genetics (Frontiers in Genetics), in material sciences (MaNEP), in study of emotions (Affective Sciences), in chemical biology (with EPFL), in study of mental illness (Synaptic, with EPFL and Unil), in study of life path (with Unil). UNIGE also carries research in international studies since the creation in 2013 of the Global Studies Institute, in finance with the Geneva Finance Research Institute, and in environmental studies, with the creation in 2009 of the Institut des sciences de l'environnement.
Famous discoveries have been made by researcher working at UNIGE including the discoveries of extrasolar planets by Michel Mayor, and of quantum teleportation by Nicolas Gisin.
