Executive Board update 2020/4

Christofer Hierold, Professor of Micro and Nanosystems, has been a member of the ETH Zurich Strategy Commission since 2014 and has served as President since 2016. At the end of August, he will be stepping down from the post of President and leaving the commission. The Executive Board thanks Christofer Hierold for his valuable contributions. His successor will be Ulrike Kutay, a professor at the Institute of Biochemistry who already serves on the commission. The Executive Board elected her as President to a term of office from 1 January 2021 to 31 December 2024.

After serving two four-year terms, Roland Riek, Full Professor of Physical Chemistry, is leaving the Research Commission. The Executive Board thanks him for his service and has selected Alexander Barnes, Full Professor of Solid-State NMR Spectroscopy, to fill the vacancy. Barnes will serve his term from 1 September 2020 to 30 June 2024.

Accelerated procedure for the Ethics Commission

The number of internal research proposals involving humans has grown significantly in recent years. In 2015, the Ethics Commission received 74 proposals, while in 2019, the figure stood at 191. Although the commission has been expanded, members have continued to experience mounting workloads, leading to long processing times and the possibility of delayed research projects.

The evaluation process for these proposals therefore needs to be reworked. Instead of always involving all commission members in the evaluation of every proposal, the new process is as follows: one group consisting of three people will conduct a focused evaluation, and this group will always include the chairperson. Each member of this three-person group then submits a comprehensive independent statement on the proposal, which is intended to ensure that the evaluations remain nuanced and complex. The Executive Board approved these changes to the Ethics Commission statutes, which will go into force on 1 August 2020.

Changes to regulations on ombudspersons

The regulations governing the role of ombudspersons were created in 2003 and have not been updated since. These regulations are part of the Ordinance Governing the Organisation of ETH Zurich (ETH Zurich Organisation Ordinance). A new external ombudsperson was recently appointed – one factor making an update necessary (see the Executive Board update from 19.06.2020). Following internal consultation and additional feedback rounds led by the University Assembly, an amended draft mandate was presented to the Executive Board, which approved the changes. The changes centre around honing the ombudspersons’ mission, regulating how documents are handled, the nomination process, and clarifying which requirements must be fulfilled by a candidate for office.

Wide-scale implementation of digital certificates

Certificates are electronic identities for users, organisational units or devices. They allow you, for example, to authenticate yourself on a network, protect email communications from phishing with a signature and encryption, or show internet users that the website they are visiting is legitimate. In other words, certificates are an important means of protecting ETH's systems and allowing for secure communication between users. ETH already makes use of numerous certificates today, but there is still no unified, efficient management solution in place for applying for, issuing, archiving, revoking or issuing reminders for certificates. In order to roll out automated certificate management across ETH, it is necessary to acquire a public key infrastructure (PKI) system. The Executive Board has given the green light to IT Services for the implementation of a PKI solution.

Connecting more buildings to the Anergy grid

The award-winning underground storage system on ETH Zurich’s Hönggerberg campus currently provides a significant number of buildings with heat and cooling. The system operates at a relatively low temperature level in order to remain energy efficient, which is commonplace only in new or renovated buildings. However, the HP and HIT building clusters, along with other neighbouring buildings, are still heated at a higher temperature level. A heat pump will be installed in order to allow these buildings to connect to the Anergy grid. The pump will take heating energy from the Anergy grid and bring it to 50 degrees – the flow temperature required by these buildings. This will allow heating energy from fossil fuels to be replaced, thereby further reducing CO₂ emissions. The new heat pump can also simultaneously produce cooling, ensuring that there is a backup cooling method for the campus.

Successful completion of the "refine" project

Five and a half years after its launch, the university-wide "refine" project has now been successfully wound down. The aim of the project was to come up with a new financial management platform for the university and to implement it using SAP technology. The "refine" project impacted all organisational units at ETH Zurich and was one of the major projects concerning process changes, finance, personnel and IT at the university. Nearly all goals set at the beginning of the project have been achieved. When the new system went live in early January 2019, the defined functions were stable and available to all users. Since then, additional functionalities (e.g. for financial reporting) have been continually developed and unveiled.

Robert Perich, Vice President of Finance and Controlling and head of the project, presented the final evaluation of the "refine" project to the Executive Board, who made note of the report and thanked everyone involved for their great contributions to the project.

Commission for Good Scientific Practice with new members

The Commission for Good Scientific Practice is getting three new members. The Executive Board has voted in Kirsten Bomblies (D-BIOL), Matthias Gaberdiel (D-PHYS) and Kenny Paterson (D-INFK) to serve a term of office until 30 June 2024. They will be replacing their colleagues Markus Aebi, Ataç Imamoglu and Adrian Perrig, who the Executive Board thanked for their service. The commission, which has one delegate from each academic department, has the mission of supporting the Executive Board regarding all questions of good scientific practice and developing a common interdisciplinary understanding of what constitutes good scientific practice for all researchers at ETH Zurich. The GSP Commission is chaired by Nicolas Gruber (D-USYS).

New confidants appointed

One of the GSP Commission's duties is nominating candidates for the office of confidant to be approved by the Executive Board. Confidants serve as contact persons for all questions on academic integrity. The Executive Board has elected Renate Schubert (D-GESS) and Peter Widmayer (D-INFK) as new confidants at the request of the GSP Commission. They will remain in office until 30 June 2024. Schubert and Widmayer took over the role from Bernhard Plattner, who held office until the end of June 2020. The Executive Board thanked him for his great service. Rainer Schulin will remain in office until 31 July 2021. Because of mounting workloads and the need to guarantee a timely response, there will now be three to four officeholders – instead of the previous two – to deal with questions of authorship, suspected plagiarism, data integrity and conflicts of interest.

Keeping risks under control

The Executive Board reviews the risk exposure of ETH Zurich every year. To this end, the Risk Management Commission provides a detailed report that is updated annually. In light of the coronavirus pandemic, a new key risk has been added to the risk catalogue for 2020: the risk of one or more major events – such as a pandemic, major fire, earthquake or cyberattack – that can cause the operations of ETH Zurich to be significantly impaired. This risk manifested itself in an acute fashion over the past several months. The swine flu, also known as the H1N1 virus, was on ETH's risk radar ten years ago. However, it was removed from the risk catalogue after the threat was deemed over by the World Health Organization. The Executive Board has charged a task force led by the Safety, Security, Health and Environment and Financial Services departments with analysing the risks associated with these kinds of major events and suggesting appropriate courses of action.

Programme for the advancement of women extended

The "external pageFix the Leaky Pipelinecall_made" career programme aims at promoting female doctoral students and postdocs. The programme has been in place at all institutions in the ETH Domain since 2007 and includes coaching, courses, networking events and mentoring for women who are part of the non-professorial teaching staff. The fourth round of the programme is set to conclude at the end of 2020. Fix the Leaky Pipeline has been extended for another four years and will run until the end of 2024. The costs of the programme for the entire ETH Domain amount to CHF 856,000. The ETH Board carries 40 percent of these costs, and ETH Zurich contributes CHF 65,000 each year.

Selling STEM to high school students

ETH Zurich is intensifying its efforts to promote STEM subjects to high-performing high school students. The ETH Youth Academy has been added to the university's MINT Learning Center, expanding support for advanced high school curricula in mathematics, IT, the natural sciences and technology. The Executive Board has approved CHF 300,000 in annual funding for the 2021–2026 project phase. This includes additional learning support for advanced high school students before they decide on a subject focus. Efforts to recruit high-performing high schoolers to study at ETH Zurich are also being boosted. More support will also be given to young students preparing to take part in high school Olympiads.

Wide-scale introduction of Microsoft 365 and Teams

In late March, ETH Zurich conducted a wide-scale rollout of the cloud-based software Microsoft 365 and Teams. The ongoing pilot trial was extended after the onset of the corona crisis. By early July 2020, around 2,200 staff members and 2,700 students had acquired licences for the software. Microsoft 365/Teams is being used regularly by 3,500 people, 1,200 of whom use it daily. ETH has ensured that data protection is in place by only activating functionalities that store data in Switzerland and the EU and by entering into contracts under Swiss law and with a Swiss court of jurisdiction. Effective immediately, the software is now available to all ETH staff and students with much greater functionality than before, including streaming and recording capabilities for up to 300 participants and the ability to hold webinars with up to 10,000 viewers. Further information can be found here.