Beatrice Beck Schimmer studied human medicine at the University of Bern and gained her habilitation at the University of Zurich in 2003. From 2005 to 2018, she was Chief of Service at the Department of Anesthesiology at the University Hospital Zurich. She has been a full professor of anesthesiology since 2009, performing basic, translational as well as clinical research. Her research areas include organ protection through the application of volatile anesthetics and topics of nanomedicine, and she has secured competitive third-party funding for both areas on numerous occasions. From 2012 to 2018, she was a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) and from 2016 to 2018 President of the specialized committee on careers as well as a member on the SNSF's Presiding Board. In addition, she held the role of Vice Dean for Academic Career Development and Equal Opportunities at the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Zurich from 2017 until mid-2018. Beatrice Beck Schimmer has played an active part in promoting academic career development, particularly when it comes to career planning for women. She strongly engaged in a mentoring program and the 'Filling the Gap' career support program of the Faculty of Medicine. Since mid-2018 Beatrice Beck Schimmer is Vice President Medicine Zurich, guiding the leadership and management of the Faculty of Medicine together with the dean and deputy dean. She is responsible for the strategic development of academic medicine in cooperation with the University of Zurich, the ETH Zurich and the four university hospitals (University Medicine Zurich, UMZH). The goal is to optimally coordinate the three areas of research, teaching, and healthcare in Zurich. So far, she established a new finance model within UMZH to allocate money from the University of Zurich to the contracting four university hospitals for research and education. Also, together with representatives of the UMZH she defined a precision medicine strategy with the main goal of establishing infrastructure at the medical hub Zurich to handle 'big data'. Additional finances for the annual support of this strategic goal were recruited from the Kanton of Zurich through her.