Prof. em. Dr. Albert Kündig

As Full Professor of Systems Engineering, Albert Kündig was with the Department of Electrical Engineering since 1983, where he advocated and implemented innovations in the computer engineering education for EE-students. He was also instrumental in setting up graduate courses in networking and embedded systems for EE- and CS-students. He retired on April 1st, 2002. From 2004 to 2006 Albert Kündig has been confidant of the school board in cases of suspected scientific fraud.

Albert Kündig, born February 19, 1937, received his EE degree (dipl.-Ing.) from the ETH Zurich in 1961 and an MS degree in applied physics from Harvard in 1964. As a member of a PTT research team, he participated in an effort to build one of the first experimental digital switching systems. His PhD thesis, accepted by ETH in 1974, described optimal filter design for digital voice communication. From 1972 to 1983, he took gradually more responsibilities in the Swiss PTT research division.

At ETH, Kündig led the build-up of the Computer Engineering & Networks group from a small team to the present lab with some 50 collaborators, joined in 1989 by Prof. B. Plattner and in 1994 by Prof. L. Thiele. His research interests focused on interpersonal multimedia communication in high performance networks, and design & development methodology for real-time, highly dependable systems. He was also responsible for a research group active in computer-based speech synthesis and speech recognition.

As director of studies for the department, Kündig was responsible from 1998 to 2001 for the introduction of the Bachelor/Master curriculum.The Departement of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering thus became a pioneer for the implementation of the Bologna model at ETH and even on a national scale. 

Albert Kündig was president of the Swiss Society for Information Technology, chairman of the IEEE Switzerland Section and governor of the International Council for Computer Communication. His association with the Technology Assessment board of the Swiss Science Council, from 1994 to 2007, reflects his keen interest for the impact IT has on society, economy and culture. Since retirement, Kündig devotes considerable time for research in local history at his hometown Münsingen. Under his guidance, a comprehensive presentation of Münsingens history was published in bookform 2010.