A network at the push of a button

Bettina Schönherr, a Masters student at ETH Zurich, would like to apply for a research project in the area of new nano materials at a university abroad. She knows which five universities around the globe are the best in this area. But she has had no personal contact with researchers of these institutions so far. Normally, she would now have to conduct lengthy research and write numerous applications to organise her planned internship abroad.

Instead, the search for suitable contacts only requires her to make a couple of clicks: in ETH Zurich’s International Knowledge Base (IKB) www.ikb.ethz.ch she can find all the institutional relationships details of this university with the universities selected, and she can also see at a glance which ETH professors from her department maintain research contacts with colleagues. This information – the collected institutional know-how about existing international relationships – helps her to efficiently organise her planned stay abroad.

All contacts at a glance

IKB has been operational for two years and is now wonderfully filled with data: a good 9,800 contacts from 121 countries can currently be found in the database. The online tool with its detailed research options offers students, researchers and employees a comprehensive overview of the ETH’s international relationships. With this type of networking tool, ETH Zurich is a step ahead of other universities. “We don’t know of any other university around the world that has such a comprehensive research platform,” says Romana Rutz, programme manager at ETH Global and co-responsible for developing the IKB.

Anyone wishing to obtain information on education agreements with foreign universities or financing sources for a planned stay abroad will find what they are looking for here, just like the person who is looking for a suitable partner institution for international research cooperation or wanting to establish an ETH alumni network.

More than 9,000 cases of cooperation

The IKB also delivers data on existing individual contacts between researchers: more than 9,000 cases of cooperation between ETH scientists and specialist colleagues around the world are saved in the database. This information helps those students, for instance, who wish to write a thesis at a university abroad. They can find the ETH professors in the IKB who are in personal contact with researchers of the preferred university and contact them for further information.

The data on research cooperation are also useful for ETH professors, be it because they help their doctoral students organise a stay abroad to conduct research and therefore wish to obtain information on international treaties and grants, or because they themselves receive an enquiry regarding a doctorate and want to learn more about the level of education and the assessment system of the applicant’s university. In this case, they can find ETH colleagues in the IKB who have contact with the corresponding university.

Romana Rutz summarises the benefit of the IKB once again: “This pooling of the data records on international contacts, which was previously managed locally in the departments, institutes and administrative units, can now be used far more efficiently by all areas of ETH Zurich for the internal know-how on the cases of international cooperation.” As with every other platform too, the benefit for all is far greater the more people participate. “It goes without saying that we rely on feedback and additions from users.” Thanks to the feedback function all ETH employees and students can therefore integrate their experiences abroad into the database and thus continuously expand the knowledge base.