“To solve the world's problems, we have to understand it.”

ETH News: Mr Schmitt, an international outlook is part of ETH Zurich’s DNA. Ten years ago, the university made its international focus official by appointing you as the first head of international relations. Why was this necessary?
Gerhard Schmitt: ETH has been very international since its foundation. When globalisation began to take hold in 2000, society viewed it rather negatively. Think of the dotcom events or the global financial crisis after 2007. But in science – and as you say at ETH in particular – globalisation has always been seen as an opportunity. The productive exchange between ETH researchers and colleagues from around the world has long been par for the course. But we realised back then that we needed to know more about the institutions that wanted to collaborate with ETH. That’s why we created a department to support international collaborations, build this network on a stronger base and protect it from potential counter-movements. The international university rankings were another sign of the globalisation of the university world, gaining favour outside of the US in the 2000s and quickly growing in importance.

How does this international focus specifically help ETH?
The starting point is always ETH’s mission: to educate, research and innovate. We can no longer do these things as well as we need to if we only adopt a Swiss perspective. We want to attract the best students, doctoral students and lecturers to ETH, and for this we need to be able to draw on a global network. Internationalisation helps us to find research solutions to problems that may emerge in a certain place earlier or more intensely than another due to climatic or developmental reasons. We can then use these solutions to develop an effective, universally applicable approach. And the same is true for teaching.

Can you give some examples?
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are prime examples of international teaching. With the Future Cities course series, we have built a teaching and citizen science community in 170 countries with more than 110,000 registrations over four years. As part of this series, we transfer basic knowledge interactively, for example by using the ETH-developed planning and modelling software "qua-kit". Qua-kit is being used in a range of areas – from research projects in Central Switzerland to urban development in Singapore – and also provides us with research data. This shows that international research and teaching is more than just an abstract concept: it must offer concrete solutions to the problems faced by people in a wide range of international contexts. For us to help solve the world’s problems, we have to first understand it.

You represented ETH’s global interests for nine years. How did you overcome the organisational challenges?
First and foremost, by building the exceptional ETH Global team! And also through new technology: the creation of the ETH International Knowledge Base, which can be accessed by all ETH members. It may sound like nothing special, but it was essential for us. Previously, this information was only selectively available – but now, with the IKB, we have achieved transparency thanks to systematic data collection throughout ETH. With more than 15,000 entries updated annually by the Annual Academic Achievements reporting, the IKB is today an essential, constantly growing source of information and a basis for the exchange between ETH and the rest of the world. My dream is to combine it with artificial intelligence and internet data and use it far more for ETH’s key processes.

By founding the SEC, ETH highlighted its international focus on Asia. How focussed is and has ETH been on pursuing opportunities on other continents?
Yes, Asia was one of our key interests from the outset due to its strong development dynamic. ETH researchers have also launched and led exciting projects on other continents – for example, to support sustainable development in Ethiopia. The work of Professor Franz Oswald, Dirk Hebel and Philippe Block in Addis Ababa and around the country was and is exemplary. If I could wish for just one thing for ETH’s international engagement, it would be that Africa and its huge potential would attract even more attention from scientists.

Over the next few years, you will continue to focus on Singapore. Is this coming together of several universities in such a creative hotspot a model for the future?
Yes, I’ve no doubt about that. To solve complex, multidisciplinary problems such as those that we’re facing in the current Cooling Singapore project, we need a large network of teams from several universities. It’s less about quantity than about applying as many different scientific approaches as possible in order to overcome the problem – and testing them out on the ground. Furthermore, Singapore adopted and realised one of our earliest ideas with the CREATE campus, where ETH now works together with other renowned international universities. Today, around 1,000 researchers from 40 countries are working here, including around 200 in ETH Zurich’s Singapore-ETH Centre.

Singapore is 10,000 kilometres south-east of Zurich. What opportunities does this distance offer ETH on the international stage?
A location in Asia means rankings. Both the SEC and, in particular, the Future Cities Laboratory are extremely well-known in Asia and give the ranking a human face. In its first 150 years, ETH created new knowledge and new technologies for Switzerland, always with a focus on independence and high ethical standards. These values are becoming increasingly important on the international university stage. ETH could also play this role on an international level, but to do this, we need to move away from the western approach of supporting seemingly less developed parts of the world with our solutions. That just doesn’t work, as we’ve seen on numerous occasions. Knowledge and experience are now flowing in all directions. By contrast, we need to make visible the hidden treasures and unique history of ETH – for example, by digitalising the collections of prints, drawings and models in our libraries so that they are more widely available to people around the world.

Finally, how have you managed to juggle your duties as an ETH professor and a role model for internationalism with so much international travel?
I have no problems travelling between continents – but it can be difficult to balance with family life. I try to compensate for every kilogram of CO2 produced by my flights with personal investments in renewable energies. And from the outset I've tried to use technology as much as possible in order to minimise my travel. For example, I've been a visiting professor at Harvard since 1993 and used to commute weekly between Boston and Zurich – but now I give more than 80 percent of my lectures virtually, so I no longer need to travel as often. International exchange has changed and intensified enormously thanks to the internet and MOOCs.