ETH News

ETH Zurich researchers from the Automatic Control Laboratory and the electricity supplier AEW Energie AG have won the 2024 Watt d’Or award in the Energy Technologies category. Their algorithm, which was implemented at AEW Energie, makes it possible to optimise electricity grid operations.

The ETH Zurich Latsis Prize goes to Professor Inge Herrmann, and the Lopez-Loreta Prize to researcher Alexandre Anthis. The two scientists have been working together for five years to develop new materials and applications for medicine.

On the 168th anniversary of ETH Zurich, Rector Günther Dissertori set out his vision for further improvements in teaching. ETH President Joël Mesot and SNB Chair Thomas Jordan spoke about how ETH contributes to a strong Switzerland and what it needs to continue its mission in the future.

In a practical teaching project, ETH students used materials from the demolished Huber Pavilions to construct a building in the spirit of the circular economy. The Re-Use Pavilion on the ETH Hönggerberg campus has now been honoured with an Arc Award.

ERC Synergy Grants have been awarded to Barbara Treutlein from the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering and Nicolas Noiray from the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, together with their European partners.

The Chinese World Laureates Association (WLA) has awarded highly endowed science prizes for the second time. The prize for Life Science or Medicine goes to ETH professor emeritus Timothy Richmond, among others.

Professors Tanja Stadler and Barbara Treutlein awarded the Cloëtta Jubilee Prize for their outstanding achievements in biomedical and developmental biology research.

Mathematician Siddhartha Mishra has been awarded this year's Rössler Prize for his research on solutions for highly complex flow and wave phenomena. He is being recognised for his contributions to faster and more accurate predictions of weather, climate and tsunamis, and for the computer simulations that enable them.

More effective, reusable and self-repairing: a new kind of corrosion protection developed by the ETH researchers Marco D'Elia, Walter Caseri und Markus Niederberger has been honoured with ETH Zurich’s Spark Award 2023. The innovation offers excellent market potential and could significantly slow down the deterioration of buildings and vehicles.

The ETH physicist has received an SNSF Consolidator Grant worth CHF 1.75 million.

The grass-roots movement founded by architectural students and scientific staff has been awarded the Prix Meret Oppenheim in recognition of its engagement in driving fundamental change in the Department of Architecture of ETH Zurich.

Solar façade panels developed by the group working under ETH Professor Arno Schlüter follow the sun’s position in the sky and in this way harvest more energy. The technology has now been awarded the Watt D’Or Energy Prize.

How does water seep through porous rock? Investigating this question with a mathematical model was the starting point for Barbara Dembin’s research. The mathematician is generating new insights in what is known as percolation theory.

Gregor Weiss used state-of-the-art microscopy to show how the body prevents bladder infections. He now wants to make this method from basic research usable for the analysis of patient samples – and has received the Lopez-Loreta Prize for it.

On the 167th anniversary of ETH Zurich, Rector Günther Dissertori spoke about the areas of teaching where he would like to see change. Against the backdrop of the current crises, ETH President Joël Mesot and Federal Councillor Alain Berset discussed the role of science in general and that of ETH in particular.

He investigates the mysteries of shapes and curvature in higher dimensions: mathematician Alessandro Carlotto will receive the 2022 ETH Zurich Latsis Prize for his original research at the frontier of mathematics and physics.

On the current list of Highly Cited Researchers, 21 have a connection to ETH Zurich. Four of these appear on the list for the first time.

Together with her group, Annette Oxenius conducts research on the fundamental mechanisms of the body’s own immune cells as they react to viral infections. The immunologist has now been honoured with the Cloëtta Prize

IEEE Computer Society honours ETH Zurich professor, Torsten Hoefler with the Sidney Fernbach Memorial Award for his pioneering contributions to large-scale parallel processing systems and supercomputers. The ideas and software professor Hoefler and his group developed are actively used by tens of thousands of scientists today to power large-scale scientific simulations and artificial intelligence systems.

The Venture Awards for Swiss start-ups were presented yesterday evening for the 25th time. In addition to the three certified ETH spin-offs DeepJudge, Kaspar& and Versics, the 15 winners included five other start-ups founded by ETH students and alumni.

Mathematician and biostatistician Tanja Stadler will receive this year’s Rössler Prize for her achievements. Worth 200,000 Swiss francs, it is ETH Zurich’s most generous research award.

Entrepreneur and philanthropist Hansjörg Wyss is one of the major private donors for Swiss science. Today, Wyss was celebrated as the laureate of the 2022 Gallatin Award of the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce.

The robotic explorer GLIMPSE, created at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich, has made it into the final round of a competition for prospecting resources in space. The long-term goal is for the robot to explore the south polar region of the moon.

This year’s ETH award for particularly innovative teaching projects goes to a course that brings physics experiments for students right into their home. The project was up against 24 others competing for the KITE Award 2022.

From diagnostics to treatment, the biochemical method developed by Daniel Richter, Edgars Lakis and Jörn Piel paves the way for a diverse range of applications in research and medicine. The researchers received the ETH Zurich Spark Award 2022 for their innovative solution.

The past year has brought challenges on three fronts: coronavirus, climate change and links with Europe. While new variants of Sars-CoV-2 were the main concern during the second year of the pandemic, governments meeting at COP21 sought commitments for more coordinated efforts in combatting climate change. For Swiss universities, 2021 also marked a turning point, as they were shut out of the EU research programme Horizon Europe.

Momoyo Kaijima, Professor of Architectural Behaviorology at ETH Zurich, and her partner Yoshiharu Tsukamoto have been honoured with this year’s Wolf Prize for their ethnographically inspired approach to architecture. According to the jury, the work produced by their studio, Atelier Bow-Wow, is characterised by a great sensitivity towards local contexts and the social impact of architecture.

To mark the International Day of Women and Girls in Science, we take a look back at a year shaped by strong women. Although there’s still a long way to go in achieving a gender balance in research and education, ETH Zurich has no shortage of female role models.

ETH President Joël Mesot paid tribute to Sarah Springman at her last ETH Day as Rector, also praising her as a mentor. Both took the opportunity to reflect on challenges that have been overcome and those that lie ahead – as did the key-note speaker Federal Councillor Simonetta Sommaruga.

Load-bearing, lightweight and now also recyclable: researchers led by Professor Paolo Ermanni were presented with the Spark Award in recognition of an innovative process for production of sustainable composite materials. ETH Zurich awarded the prize to their promising invention, with this year marking the tenth time the award has been given.

ETH and the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems are intensifying their partnership to promote doctoral candidates and research: ETH professors Otmar Hilliges, Thomas Hofmann, Andreas Krause and Klaas P. Prüssmann are new Max Planck fellows in Tübingen and Stuttgart.

European Patent Office honours Robert Grass and Wendelin Stark, professors of chemical engineering for their research in DNA encapsulation. Their invention enables the storage of digital data for thousands of years and product tracing throughout supply chains.

How do you teach machines to learn for themselves and support people? Andreas Krause is one of Europe’s leading machine learning researchers. His approaches combine mathematical elegance with a sense of social responsibility. He has now been awarded the Rössler Prize, ETH Zurich’s most generous research award.

ETH Professor Emeritus Anne Lacaton and her partner Jean-Philippe Vassal have received this year’s Pritzker Prize for their social and sustainable architecture. The prize is regarded as the Nobel Prize of the architecture world. ETH celebrated this success on Wednesday with a virtual event of honour, which was attended by ETH President Joël Mesot as well as the two prize winners.

Anne Lacaton, Emeritus Professor of Architecture and Design at ETH Zurich, and her partner Jean-Philippe Vassal have received the most prestigious international architecture prize for their sustainable and social approach to building design.

Lavinia Heisenberg has been awarded the ETH Latsis Prize for her outstanding achievements in theoretical physics. The ETH professor dreams of being an astronaut.

On the occasion of the 165th anniversary of ETH Zurich, Rector Sarah Springman and ETH President Joël Mesot took stock of how the university has weathered the crisis until now. A few outstanding individuals were also honored during the event.

Why is gravity the most mysterious force of nature? Lavinia Heisenberg studies how the universe was formed, and how it is changing. She has now been awarded the ETH Zurich Latsis Prize for her outstanding achievements in the field of theoretical physics.

Ruedi Aebersold, a professor of molecular systems biology at ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich, is to receive the Swiss Science Prize Marcel Benoist. Aebersold is being honoured for the part he has played in founding and advancing the field of proteomics, a branch of biology that is seen as the foundation of the personalised medicine of tomorrow.

The fact that there are many different types of infinities is one of the big puzzles in mathematics. One mathematician who enjoys investigating which infinities can actually occur is Saharon Shelah, the guest speaker at this year’s Paul Bernays Lectures.

Three out of five awards for young entrepreneurs issued by the W.A. de Vigier Foundation have gone to ETH start-ups. The awards come with prize money of CHF 100,000 each.

Jan Dirk Wegner uses artificial intelligence to research different aspects of the Earth's surface. In doing so, he hopes to help raise people's quality of life and protect the environment. His work has now earned him a place in the World Economic Forum's Young Scientists community.

The winners of the Alfred Escher Prize 2020 are Julia Gschwind and Sébastien Delsad. This year ETH Zurich awarded the Escher prize for its second time, as one of the special prizes in the 54th national competition “Swiss Youth in Science”.

Two researchers from ETH Zurich have been awarded USD 1.5 million each from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to explore the diverse symbiotic relationships between bacteria and other aquatic organisms.

Computer science at school can be very creative. On the tenth Swiss Day for Computer Science Teaching, ETH Zurich provided teachers from all levels of schooling with new approaches to teaching computer science. The Rector also honoured schools and teachers who are committed to lively computer science lessons.

At the ceremony to mark the 164th anniversary of ETH Zurich, Rector Sarah Springman outlined how she wants to equip students for the future. ETH President Joël Mesot and Federal Councillor Guy Parmelin spoke about social changes and how the ETH is addressing them. As part of the celebrations, the physicist Evelyn Hu was awarded an honorary doctorate.

Dominik Hangartner, a political scientist at ETH Zurich, has received one of Switzerland’s most prestigious science awards. The National Latsis Prize has recognised the quality of Hangartner’s research on migration and its importance for public policy. We sat down with Hangartner to find out what drives him and what he finds so exciting about turning research into concrete policies.

Bernhard Schölkopf, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems and Affiliated Professor at ETH Zurich, today received the Körber European Science Prize for his research in the field of machine learning and artificial intelligence.

Alessio Figalli’s life has changed since he was awarded the Fields Medal one year ago. There’s now more intensive contact to schools and public life, and he has taken on new tasks in research. He masters them with a joyful outlook and optimism.

Are there limits to what computers are actually able to compute, and do quantum computers really solve more problems than conventional computers? Computer scientist Scott Aaronson will discuss these kinds of fundamental questions during the Paul Bernays Lectures 2019.

To mark its 30th anniversary, the W.A. de Vigier Foundation awarded twice as many start-ups as usual. Six out of ten prizes were won by ETH Zurich start-ups.

French biochemist Emmanuelle Charpentier, one of the scientists who discovered the Crispr gene editing tool, is being honoured with ETH Zurich’s Richard R. Ernst Gold Medal.

Raffaele Mezzenga, Sreenath Bolisetty and Qingrui Zhang have been awarded the Spark Award 2019 for their filter, which removes harmful fluoride from drinking water. Their invention gives people all over the world access to clean drinking water.

On 9 February 2019, researchers from ETH Zurich and Disney Research had the honour of receiving a Sci-Tech Oscar in Hollywood for their capture system, Medusa.

This year’s Ruzicka Prize has been awarded to Christof Sparr, Assistant Professor at the University of Basel. The 38-year-old ETH alumnus was honoured for his outstanding achievements in the development of new synthesis methods.

What can computers do better than people? Fields Medal winner Timothy Gowers is one of the leading mathematicians of our time. He doesn't avoid the big questions. On Wednesday, he will deliver the Wolfgang Pauli Lecture entitled “Why isn't mathematical research impossible?”

Sebastian Krinner is the first winner of the Lopez-Loreta Prize at ETH Zurich. The physicist has a clear goal: he wants to build a quantum computer that is not only powerful, but also works without errors.

This year’s ETH Day was organised in honour of our students and as an appreciation of the work of Lino Guzzella, the outgoing President of ETH Zurich. Numerous speeches recalled the many highlights of the past year and addressed the important tasks that lie ahead for ETH.

The computational chemist Sereina Riniker has won this year’s Latsis Prize awarded by ETH Zurich. She has been recognised for developing new methods for molecular dynamics simulations.

Siddhartha Mishra is the winner of the 2019 ICIAM Collatz Prize which is one of the most prestigious prizes awarded in applied mathematics.

Harvard mathematician Barry Mazur will talk about the unity and scope of mathematics on 11 September in his Paul Bernays Lectures at ETH Zurich. Variety enriches mathematics. This is why it is intriguing to enquire about a unification that combines different mathematical theories and methods.  

ETH Zurich peace and conflict researcher Lars-Erik Cederman has won Switzerland’s biggest science award for 2018, the Marcel Benoist Prize. In his research he studies how the fair distribution of power and resources can reduce the risk of ethnic conflicts. As both a person and researcher, a balanced nature is one of his defining features.

At the togETHer staff party, Professor Laura Nyström was presented with the ALEA Award as ETH Zurich’s most exemplary leader. The award, presented annually, aims to emphasise the huge importance of leadership skills for the success of ETH and to promote the desired leadership culture.

Reto Knutti, a professor for climate physics at ETH Zurich, will be awarded the 2018 prize of Dr J.E. Brandenberger Foundation for his achievements in the field of climate change research and the communication of his results to the public.

Alessio Figalli, Professor of Mathematics at ETH Zurich, was awarded the Fields Medal today for his outstanding contribution to mathematical research. The medal is to mathematics what the Nobel Prize is to natural sciences.

Alessio Figalli is a recipient of the Fields Medal for his research into optimal transport theory. Who is this individual? What characterises his research? In what way is mathematics a creative thought process? How are clouds, soap bubbles and crystals related to transport costs? The portrait of a mathematician who has made problem-solving his profession.

Avalanches, tsunamis, solar storms: Siddhartha Mishra is captivated by unstable and turbulent flows. He combines mathematics with scientific computing in a bid to understand their common causes. Helping him in his quest are equations, first written down by the Swiss mathematician, Leonhard Euler.

Extraordinary and economical: civil engineer and architect Philippe Block develops novel ways of building for the architecture of tomorrow. He has now been awarded the Rössler Prize for his work.