News from the Executive Board 2021 / 10

2022 budget approved

ETH Zurich has experienced significant growth over the past few years, and the university’s long-​term financial commitments have grown in tandem. In the past two years, corresponding measures have been taken to reduce the pace of growth over the next few years in order to ensure that ETH can continue fulfilling its core mission of teaching, research and knowledge transfer as effectively as possible in the future (see article “Reducing the pace of growth at ETH”).

The associated efforts are now having an impact: the deficit budgeted for 2022 is CHF 65.7 million, which is roughly half of the deficit budgeted for 2021. In total, the 2022 budget, which the Executive Board has definitively approved, amounts to CHF 1,508 million.

Several factors have contributed to this: All Executive Board domains, departments and technology platforms have prioritised their growth plans and showed great discipline in their budget submissions. The central administrative units have curbed their costs in the 2022 budget. Moreover, departmental solidarity contributions have been integrated into the Executive Board budget and, last but not least, the ETH Board’s funding allocation will increase by 2.8 percent compared to 2021.

Christian Wolfrum to remain Associate Vice President for Medicine

Christian Wolfrum, Professor for Translational Nutritional Biology at ETH Zurich’s Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health, has been Associate Vice President for Medicine since 1 July 2020. To ensure continuity and room for manoeuvre within the strategic action area of health and medicine, the Executive Board has extended his term of office for another two years.

The duties of the Associate Vice President for Medicine include especially:

• Promoting new initiatives and pooling current ones at ETH Zurich as well as providing general support to the Vice President for Research and the Executive Board on matters pertaining to the subject of medicine.
• Encouraging ETH to network internally and externally in the field of medicine.
• Representing ETH on (steering) committees, networks and advisory boards.
• Taking over dossiers as well as overseeing the strategic implementation of initiatives in the ETH Domain.

For more information on Christian Wolfrum and his activities as Associate Vice President for Medicine, please see this ETH News article.

Master’s in Cyber Security: Degree programme stipend extended

D-INFK has offered the Master’s degree programme in Cyber Security, which ETH runs jointly with EPFL, since autumn 2019. Each student in the programme does a semester at the partner university. This exchange semester is supported by both ETH and EPFL with a stipend of CHF 2,500 and guaranteed housing for the exchange semester.

These measures had originally been scheduled to last three years. However, at the request of D-INFK, the Executive Board has now agreed to extend both measures.

The Master’s degree programme fulfils the Swiss Federal Council’s strategic requirement to promote and provide expertise in the field of cybersecurity and strengthens cooperation within the ETH Domain across the language regions.