January 2017

Both science and Swiss businesses are benefiting from the ETH science hub in Singapore. The newly founded Switzerland Technology Impact Platform (STIP) is helping Swiss SMEs to gain a foothold in Asia. For Remo Burkhard, Managing Director of the Singapore-ETH Centre, STIP offers an opportunity to link research with practice, which is in everybody’s interests.

The capacity to detect temperature changes is an important function of the human skin. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now developed a highly sensitive and, at the same time, flexible temperature sensor, which could soon be used in prosthetic limbs and robotic arms.

ETH Zurich held a ski workshop for undergraduate students for the first time. Over a six-week period, the participants built their own sustainable skis, from designing them on the computer to testing them out on the slopes.

Tim Berners-Lee, the father of the World Wide Web, has had a substantial impact on our lives. While his invention was a resounding success and the Internet has developed unexpectedly fast, he is anything but satisfied with today's situation.

Worldwide about a third of all food gets lost before it reaches our stomachs. For Swiss potatoes this is even more – half of the total harvest. Which measures can reduce the loss, and what effect do they have?

Dramatic developments have been documented at the Aletsch glacier, where the ice has retreated at such a pace that an adjoining slope has also started to move rapidly. With the help of a unique dataset, researchers are able to demonstrate a direct connection between the ice loss of the Aletsch glacier and the slippage of the Moosfluh slope.

On their expedition around the Antarctic, Iris Thurnherr and Pascal Graf visit various subantarctic islands in the Southern Ocean that host unique ecosystems. The researchers are collecting samples in order to learn more about the water cycle.

ETH Zurich is presenting its latest research findings in a public exhibition at the World Economic Forum 2017. ETH’s début WEF appearance was launched with a meeting with politicians, public authorities and businesspeople from the canton of Grisons.

How will digitalisation, artificial intelligence and robotics change the world of work? This question was discussed by numerous experts from business and academia at the “Global Talent Summit” before an audience of more than 300 in the Audi Max room at ETH Zurich.

Researchers at ETH Zurich and the University of Geneva have succeeded for the first time in using a laboratory X-ray source to demonstrate how two highly fluorinated molecules change within a few quadrillionths of a second, or femtoseconds.