ETH Podcast episode 30 to 39

Before it reaches our plates, the food we eat usually has travelled a long way. In this episode of the ETH podcast, we talk about how far a breakfast travels and the resulting political and ecological significance. Chair of the World Food System Center Professor Robert Finger and ETH researcher, lecturer and outreach coordinator Kenza Benabderrazik speak about the many layers of the system that feeds people around the globe.

Horizon Europe is the European Union’s multi-billion-euro research programme. Until a year ago, Switzerland was an associated country. Scientists at Swiss universities could apply for prestigious grants from the European Research Council. Due to political differences, Switzerland is now largely excluded from this programme.

Robert-Jan Smits is the former Director-General of Research and Innovation at the European Commission and wants research to reunite. Stick to Science is not only a petition that he and many others signed. ETH professor Andreas Wallraff and ERC Grant recipient Katharina Gapp also talk about their frustration at the impact that politics is having on their research, namely quantum and neuroscience.

On International Women’s Day, the ETH podcast has a close look at facts and figures regarding gender equality at ETH. Rachael Garrett, a professor in the Department of Humanities, Social and Political Science, tells her story about working full-​time and criticism she gets from those minding her children. We also ask two male professors a few biased questions that only women usually get to hear, and Julia Dannath, one of ETH’s Vice Presidents, explains how things are speeding up when it comes to achieving more equality, in professorships, for instance.

Usually, failure is something shameful, or at least it used to be. Nowadays, people rather talk about how crucial failure is for success. In this episode of the ETH podcast, we explore the benefits of failing and what makes stories about failure so interesting. Sascha Stocker, who used to be on the board of the ETH Entrepreneur Club, talks about organising “FuckUp Nights,” and ETH Professor Manu Kapur explains how he discovered the power of failure for teaching mathematics.

ETH’s Student Project House is a dream come true for young inventors. It's a space where flashes of inspiration can materialise - or not and a place where students can implement their ideas without the pressure of succeeding. The ETH-Podcast talks to the head of the Student Project House, Lucie Rejman, who shows us around and introduces a few tinkerers who use the 3-D-printer, laser cutters, as well as people who breed grasshoppers, or young students inventing a straw that should check drinks for drugs.

The ETH is the alma mater of quite a few Nobel Prize Laureates, the most prominent of whom is probably Albert Einstein. He is somewhat of a pop star inside and outside of the scientific community. For the 100th anniversary of the Nobel Prize in Physics, ETH spin-off Animatico has created an animated figure called Digital Einstein. In the ETH Podcast, we talk to Patrick Karpiczenko, the author and impersonator of Digital Einstein, along with ETH Physics Professor Marina Krstic Marinkovic about why Albert Einstein is still a role model for young scientists.

The two scientists Alexander Puzrin and Johan Gaume solved the mysterious incident this year. They tell us in the ETH podcast why they got interested in the incident and what happened after they published their findings.

What began at lunch between the ETH-​Professors Sabine Werner and Edoardo Mazza emerged as a nationwide interdisciplinary consortium of scientists from diverse universities and hospitals. The goal of Skintegrity.CH is to understand and treat skin diseases and abnormalities in wound healing. Sabine and Edoardo from the ETH as well as Lukas Sommer from the University of Zürich talk about our largest organ, the skin - from the tiniest particles to its breeding. They also let us know how collaboration works in such a large group and why it empowers the next generation of researchers.

In this episode Martin Ackermann and Tanja Stadler, both professors at ETH Zurich, talk about what the pandemic taught them about the intersection of science and politics, how they cope with being people of public interest and also about how they hope the task force will become redundant in the future, even though the virus remains.

Didier Queloz is a highly passionate person with a broad sense of humour. Instead of becoming a storyteller, he chose to become an astrophysicist. While working on his PhD., he made a discovery that changed astronomy entirely. Together with his professor Michel Mayor, Didier Queloz received the Physics Nobel Prize for this discovery.