ETH Day 2023

Günther Dissertori has been Rector of ETH Zurich since February 2022 and Professor of Physics since 2001. As Rector, he is responsible for all matters relating to teaching and for the organisation and quality assurance of the academic programme. In addition, he is deputy to the President. The physicist grew up in South Tirol and studied at the University of Innsbruck, where he completed his doctorate. He then joined CERN in Geneva as a doctoral researcher, where he was later involved in setting up the CMS experiment in the large particle accelerator, one of the two experiments that made it possible to prove the existence of the Higgs boson. Students in his department have awarded him the Golden Owl for excellent teaching four times, and he has also received the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching.

Joël Mesot has been Full Professor of Physics since 2008 and also President of ETH Zurich since 2019. ETH Zurich was where he originally studied and obtained a doctoral degree in solid state physics. As President, he assumes overall legal and political responsibility for the university. He heads the process for appointing new professors and defines university strategy together with the Executive Board and other ETH bodies. His duties also include managing relations with official bodies, policymakers and the public. Between 2008 and 2018, he was Director of the Paul Scherrer Institute. Previously, he spent many years doing research in France and the United States in the field of solid state physics.

Thomas J. Jordan is Chairman of the Governing Board of the Swiss National Bank (SNB). He received his PhD (Dr rer. pol.) from the University of Bern in 1993. After a post-doctoral research period at Harvard University, he joined the SNB as a scientific advisor in 1997. He became a private lecturer at the University of Bern in 1998 and an honorary professor in 2003. The University of Basel awarded him an honorary doctorate in 2017. The Federal Council appointed Thomas J. Jordan as a member of the SNB Governing Board in 2007, Vice-Chairman in 2010 and Chairman in 2012. He is Governor of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for Switzerland. Thomas J. Jordan is a member of the Board of Directors and Chairman of the Banking and Risk Management Committee of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) in Basel. He represents Switzerland on the Plenary and Steering Committees of the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and chairs the FSB Standing Committee on Budget and Resources (SCBR).

Julia Bogdan is about to complete her Bachelor's degree in Computer Science and has been President of the Association of Students at ETH (VSETH) since September 2023. She grew up in St. Gallen, where she attended cantonal school before starting her studies at ETH in 2019. She has been interested in university politics since she started her studies. She was involved in the Student Association of Computer Science VIS for three years, including two years as its president, before taking over the presidency of the VSETH. The VSETH is the umbrella organisation for all students at ETH and, as the official student representative body, exercises its rights of participation at ETH. With 17 professional associations and various commissions, VSETH is also an integral part of student life at ETH.

Cathy Marulli completed her Bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary natural sciences with a focus on chemistry and biology and her Master's degree in systems biology at ETH Zurich. During her Master's thesis in the group of Prof. Dr Paola Picotti, she developed an innovative method for measuring dynamic protein interactions in cells, for which she was awarded the ETH Medal in 2020. Proteins are the molecular machines of the cell, which can perform different functions depending on their structure. Since 2020, Marulli has continued to dedicate her doctoral studies to developing novel approaches to explore the complex interplay of protein form and function.

Yun-Wei Lien

Yun-Wei Lien completed her Master's degree at the National University of Taiwan in 2019 and then decided to pursue doctoral studies at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at ETH Zurich under the supervision of Prof. Dr Martin Pilhofer and Dr Gregor Weiss. In her doctoral project, Lien is characterising the mechanism behind a bacterial predatory behaviour. This behaviour, called ixotrophy, can be observed in predatory filamentous bacteria that capture and dissolve prey bacteria on their surface. With collaboration partners from other disciplines, Lien has identified, on the one hand, grapple-hook-shaped structures on the surface of the predatory bacteria that trap the prey and, on the other hand, an injection system for the subsequent killing of the prey.