In a move that will strengthen real estate research and education, EBP co-endows two professorships at the University of Zurich’s Center for Urban & Real Estate Management (CUREM).
EBP is supporting the Center for Urban & Real Estate Management (CUREM) and the Faculty of Economics at the University of Zurich in an exciting new chapter of its history. Since its founding 2003, CUREM has become a renowned institution for further education in the real estate industry. Now, almost twenty years later: with the support of EBP, UBS Fund Management (Switzerland) AG and Wüest Partner AG, starting in fall 2024, two new professorships for Real Estate Economics & Finance will be created and filled by Prof. Dr. Christian Hilber and Dr. Francisco Amaral. This will not only further strengthen CUREM's scientific base, but also further establish Zurich as a leading location for real estate research and education.
EBP’s main motivation for co-funding the professorships is to promote innovative and sustainable solutions to the challenges society faces in the real estate sector and in spatial development. In addition, the support of EBP is intended to build a conduit between science and practice, and to boost the training of qualified specialists.
A new milestone: harmonizing theoretical and applied science
CUREM’s integration into the University of Zurich in 2009 represented an important step towards improving the quality of academic programs in real estate management. The UZH was the first university in Switzerland to offer a Master of Science in Real Estate program, which today continues to bring together the most renowned experts from Switzerland and abroad as lecturers including several EBP employees who teach at CUREM. Moving into the next phase of its development, with the new professorships, CUREM is building a bridge between excellent research and practice-oriented continuing education, an important objective for both CUREM and the Swiss real estate sector.
New impetus in research: Prof. Dr. Christian Hilber and Dr. Francisco Amaral
The newly created professorships will be held by two outstanding academics, both of whom have in-depth expertise and international recognition in their specialist areas: Prof. Dr. Christian Hilber, who is taking on a part-time professorship ad personam (20%) at the University of Zurich, is an internationally renowned real estate economist and Professor of Economic Geography at the London School of Economics (LSE). His research focuses on housing supply and urban development.
Dr. Francisco Amaral will begin his tenure in October 2024 as an assistant professor at the University of Zurich, bringing with him extensive expertise at the interface of financial and real estate economics. The professorships are institutionally positioned at CUREM and the Department of Finance at the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics of UZH.
Zurich as a center of excellence in the real estate industry
The two professorships create a foundation that will enable CUREM to rise to the level of a center of competence at UZH by the beginning of 2025, establishing CUREM as a worldclass institution for real estate research and education. The focus will be on four central objectives: promotion of research and knowledge transfer; facilitating cooperation with national and international partners; further development of real estate management continuing education programs; and the transfer of knowledge in undergraduate teaching.
For more information about the new professorships:
www.curem.uzh.ch/forschung