With its highly qualified graduates, cutting-edge research and knowledge transfer, ETH Zurich exists to serve Swiss society. The university demonstrated this once again in 2023. ETH News looks back at an eventful year.
Education is Switzerland’s most important natural resource and the bedrock of its current and future success. In 2023, ETH Zurich students once again put their knowledge into practice by building an electric racing car that broke the previous world record for acceleration. ETH’s mythen vehicle accelerated from 0 to 100 km/h in just 0.956 seconds. Another team of students travelled more than 3,000 kilometres in their self-built solar car. The students drove for six days through the sweltering heat of the Australian outback to complete the World Solar Challenge.
But cars aren’t the only thing that ETH’s students and researchers work with: they used drones to collect traces of DNA from living organisms in the rainforest, thereby identifying numerous species of plants and animals. Their technology was impressive enough to land them in the finals of the XPRIZE Rainforest competition.
Parathlete Flurina Rigling is also aiming to take part in a prestigious competition: the 2024 Paralympics in Paris. ETH student Luca Hasler built Rigling a new custom set of bike handlebars. Rigling is expecting them to bring her enhanced safety and comfort, but above all faster times.
Knowledge transfer ensures innovation and prosperity
In transferring knowledge and technology, ETH Zurich is a key driver of Switzerland’s innovation capacity and prosperity. This year, the university was again involved in the launch of numerous start-ups, including aiEndoscopic. This ETH spin-off built a device that uses robotics and artificial intelligence to make intubations for artificial respiration simpler and safer.
In 2023, ETH researchers also developed a range of technologies that benefit society and industry. These include a new self-repairing and reusable corrosion-protection material for buildings and vehicles; smart running leggings that use a textile sensor to detect the wearer’s exhaustion level during physical exertion; a new seismic risk model that shows where and how earthquakes will affect people and buildings; and a fire simulator for testing timber components under realistic conditions.
What’s more, a consortium of partners from science and industry led by ETH Zurich showed that it’s possible to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it either in recycled concrete or in geological reservoirs. ETH Zurich also teamed up with the EPFL to launch two initiatives: a green energy coalition to push solutions for storing and transporting renewable energy carriers; and the Swiss AI Initiative. The goal of the latter is to position Switzerland as a leading hub for transparent and reliable artificial intelligence.
Collaboration as the key to success
Collaboration across research disciplines and with national and international partners leads to a more fruitful search for solutions to the problems of today and tomorrow. In this vein, in 2023 ETH Zurich and the UN confirmed the launch of a new partnership. In the future, ETH researchers will make their expertise more available to the UN, including in the areas of conflict research, development cooperation and food security. And thanks to a sizeable donation from the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, ETH is planning to establish a new teaching and research centre in Heilbronn. Over the next 30 years, 20 new professorships will be created.
In the field of medical research, scientists from ETH and the University Hospital Zurich developed a fully automated test method for multiple myeloma, a type of blood cancer. They are using this method to discover which treatment options provide the best outcome. Meanwhile, ETH material scientists were working with colleagues from Nanyang Technological University Singapore. In the future, they want to use chicken feathers to produce a membrane for fuel cells and thus generate electricity.
ETH Zurich is going to expand its space research activities and its collaboration with the space industry and launch a new interdisciplinary Master’s programme for space science and technology. NASA’s former Science Director Thomas Zurbuchen has been recruited to lead «ETH Zurich Space». Together with partners from the space industry, ETH researchers are already working on broadband internet communication using lasers and satellites.
ETH President Joël Mesot and Reinhold Geilsdörfer, Managing Director of the Dieter Schwarz Foundation, have signed a far-reaching letter of intent. (Photograph: Valeriano Di Domenico) Thomas Zurbuchen, the former Director of Science at NASA, is taking over as head of the ETH Space initiative. (Photograph: ETH Zurich) The researchers tested data transmission by laser over 53 kilometres from the Jungfraujoch to Zimmerwald near Bern. (Photograph: ETH Zurich)
Fundamentals for the innovations of tomorrow
ETH Zurich is also accomplished at conducting fundamental research. In 2023, several studies generated a buzz, expanded the store of knowledge and laid the foundation for future discoveries.
For example, ETH researchers proved that Mars’s crust is twice as thick as Earth’s. Another team of researchers think it is possible that urea may have played a key role in the emergence of life on Earth. Two other research teams discovered indications that climate change is exacerbating itself: on a warmer and drier planet Earth, microorganisms in the soil will produce considerably more CO2 and release it into the atmosphere than they do today. At the same time, plants in tropical rainforests will absorb far less CO2.
Then there was another Schrödinger’s cat: in quantum physics, superpositions can be alive and dead at the same time. This year, ETH researchers created the heaviest Schrödinger’s cat to date.
Bacteria are all about survival: biomedical scientists clarified why different strains of Salmonella can colonise the human gut. The bacteria exchange genetic information that makes them resistant to antibiotics. And finally, ETH bioengineers developed designer cells that could one day supply insulin to diabetics. What triggers these cells to release insulin? Rock music.
Potential witness to the origins of life: a urea dimer. (Visualisations: Adobe Stock / Montage)
Tropical ecosystems and rainforests under drought: Aerial view of Lake Anama in Manaus, Brazil, in October 2005 after a month-long drought had lowered the level of parts of the Amazon River by several metres. (Photograph: Keystone) Strain-specific food preferences enable different Salmonella strains to co-colonize the gut. (Photograph: Adobe Stock) Bioengineers have developed designer cells for which rock music serves as a signal. (Photographs: Keystone SDA / Science Photo Library. Montage: Katja Schubert)
