Uschi Backes-Gellner is Professor for Empirical Research in Business, Industrial Relations and Human Resource Management at the University of Zurich since 2002. Since 2006 she is also Co-Director of the Swiss Leading House on the Economics of Education, Firm Behaviour and Training Policies (joint with Prof. Wolter, University of Bern), and since 2008 Vice-Dean of the Faculty of Business, Economics and Informatics of the University of Zurich. From 1995 to 2002 she was Full-Professor for Business and Personnel Economicsat the University of Cologne and from 1988-1995 Senior Researcher at the Institute for Labour Law and Industrial Relations in the European Community.

She has served in national and international advisory committees such as the newly established “Council of the World of Work“ of the German Federal Government (since 2020), the Swiss Federal Committee on “Vocational Education and Training” (2004-2015), the Steering Committee for the new “Continuing Training Law” of the Swiss Federal Government (2008-2013), the expert committee on Financing Life Long Learning of German Federal Government (2000-2004), or the Commission of Experts for Research and Innovation (EFI) advising the German Chancellor (2011 to 2019). She was also a member of a Working Group of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina on “Ageing Societies and the World of Work” (2004 to 2009) and she is member of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation (since 2017).

She was a visiting scholar at Northwestern University, Evanston/USA (1988, 2015), the University of California, Berkeley (1990, 2009), Cornell University (2000) and Harvard University (2018/19).
Her research focuses on topics from Personnel Economics, Industrial Relations, the World of Work, and the Economics of Apprenticeship Training and Lifelong Learning.