Interview date: 11th March 2020
Since mid-March 2020 and in accordance with the decisions of the Federal Council, ETH Zurich has been operating in emergency mode like the rest of the country. Overnight, ETH had to switch its classroom teaching to online teaching and was forced to reduce its laboratory re-search to a minimum - with the exception of research on the coronavirus. The entire adminis-trative staff including the Executive Board was asked to stay at home and work from home office. ETH Zurich, together with other universities, is involved in various initiatives and plat-forms to support the needs of hospitals and other health care institutions. ETH students launched an online marketplace to refer students to hospitals and pharmacies. There are many more initiatives, see also the revamped ETH website on all corona-related activities.
ETH Zurich – the Swiss Federal Institute of Technlogy in Zürich – ranks sixth worldwide in the latest edition of the prestigious QS World University Rankings, making it the best university in continental Europe. “The result shows the university’s strong standing thanks to a broad foundation of scientific excellence,” says Joël Mesot, President of ETH Zurich. “The ranking also reflects the exceptional reputation that Switzerland enjoys as a research hub.” ETH has two campuses in Zurich – in the city center and a modern facility in Hönggerberg on the out-skirts of the city. In Basel, near the university hospital and major pharmaceutical industry companies, it hosts the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, and in the can-ton of Ticino, the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. Furthermore, ETH operates a re-search hub in Singapore focused on future sustainable cities, resilience, and health technolo-gies. There are nearly 10,000 undergraduate students (Bachelor), 11,200 graduate students (Master’s and doctoral researchers), 530 professors and 6400 scientific staff members in the ETH community. The institution’s annual budget is around 1.8 billion SFr, of which 30% comes from third party funding. ETH Zurich and its sister institution EPFL, are the only Fed-eral universities in Switzerland. All other universities in Switzerland are administered under the auspices of cantonal authorities.
The Federal Council elected Dr. Joël Mesot as President of ETH Zurich in 2019. Previously he had been the Director of the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI), the largest publicly funded re-search institute in Switzerland, for ten years. PSI is a world leader in the field of lasers. Dr. Mesot, a physicist by education, earned his doctorate at ETH. He also attended IMD in Lau-sanne.
This note has nine parts, plus an appendix:
ETH Zurich’s strategy
Entrepreneurship at ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich’s Multidisciplinary Focus
Where Academia Meets Industry – Zurich’s Talent Ecosystem
Cooperating with the Competition
ETH Zurich’s Campuses and Historic Buildings
Funding Research
The Student Base
The Singapore-ETH Center and Research Hub
The Historical Frame of Reference that led to ETH Zurich
ETH Zurich’s Strategy
ETH Zurich is one of the world’s leading research and advanced teaching institutions in the field of science and technology. A key part of ETH’s strategic process is therefore to focus on what might be key critical success factors in the future for a top-quality academic institu-tion such as ETH to maintain its commitment to excellence and lead in research and teaching. In the light of increased political and societal expectations as well as technological changes, traditional universities such as ETH must find ways to embrace change. This is why the Pres-ident launched an initiative called “rETHink.” Its purpose is to enable ETH Zurich to:
Further strengthen individual responsibility at all levels – professorships, academic departments, Executive Board and central administrative units;
Establish excellent professional structures throughout the university for student sup-port and personnel leadership;
Strengthen strategic and operational leadership at all levels; as well as
Foster and further develop the collaboration and core values that promote a sense of belonging among all members of the ETH community.
As part of the rETHink project, earlier this year the Executive Board decided to create two new Executive Board domains: one for Leadership and Personnel Development, the other for Knowledge Transfer and Corporate Relations. The overall project includes six “work streams “- operative work packages with well-defined content. At the same time, the work streams will allow for important connections and inter-relations. The first five work streams focus on the institutional structure of the organization: the professorships, the academic departments, the Executive Board and central administrative units, university bodies and the institution as a whole. To promote a sense of belonging in the ETH community, as well as further develop cooperation and core values, an overarching work stream is devoted to cultural development. Dr. Mesot saw this as perhaps the most critical of all the six parts of the “rETHink” program.
The implementation of the rETHink project ensures close cooperation with professors, aca-demic departments, and relevant participating bodies. With a project structure that consists of external support and an Executive Board representative in each of the work streams, the de-sign anticipates an efficient and carefully targeted implementation.
Entrepreneurship at ETH Zurich
For a growing number of students starting a company has become a valuable alternative to industry employment. This strong entrepreneurial mentality is the result of a new culture that has taken hold over the past 15 years at ETH. This manifested in various programs and initi-atives to foster entrepreneurship:
Pioneer Fellows: The Pioneer Fellowship program that launched in 2011 has enabled Master’s and doctoral students to apply for financial support of up to 150’000 Swiss francs in order to develop a prototype within an 18-month period. Coaching and profes-sional guidance is being offered through the “Innovation & Entrepreneurship Lab” at ETH. Since the inception of the program, Pioneer Fellows have founded no less than 60 startup companies.
Spinoff support and venture capital: Every year, ETH students and researchers found some 25 new spin-off companies. There has also been an impressive development in terms of venture capital. ETH start-ups were responsible for more than half of the total venture capital raised in the canton of Zurich in 2019 amounting to 1.2 billion Swiss Francs.
Project and research oriented education: There is a long tradition of involving students in research projects from an early stage in their studies. One such program, the “Focus projects competition” affords student teams at the end of their bachelor studies the op-portunity to develop a fully functioning prototype from scratch. ETH Zurich recently opened a student project house to facilitate the testing of ideas.
Critical Thinking and ETH Week: As part of the Critical Thinking initiative at ETH, stu-dent teams across all 16 departments work on highly relevant global issues such as nu-trition, health, or mobility. Within just one week, students rise to the challenge of framing a problem and coming up with a solution.
ETH Zurich’s Multidisciplinary Focus
“Scientific breakthroughs often happen at the interface of different disciplines,” underlined Dr. Mesot. This is why he sees a multidisciplinary approach to research as key, while as noted, also maintaining ETH Zurich’s strong departmental orientation. The latter is the key to being able to “go deep,” to truly undertake fundamental scientific research. However, the university makes a strong case for working on cross-disciplinary projects. It is important that students learn early on in their academic studies to work beyond their own field of expertise and devel-op cross-disciplinary communication skills. In the special programs, mentioned above, or even within the context of their own curriculum, student teams build, for example, electric cars or quantum computers. Allowing students to test how things work, without too much profes-sorial involvement (i.e., bottom-up driven projects) is key for learning how to address the big issues that carry strong social implications.
Where Academia Meets Industry – Zurich’s Talent Ecosystem
ETH Zurich plays a vital role in the Swiss innovation ecosystem. Many of the big IT compa-nies such as Google, Microsoft, IBM, and Disney have developed research activities in Zur-ich and opened labs in close cooperation with the university. There is a strong recognition that ETH Zurich and its alumni act as catalysts to bring high-tech firms from all over the world to the Zurich area. Here are just a few examples:
IBM Research lab in Rüschlikon was founded 64 years ago. In 2011, IBM and ETH Zur-ich deepened their partnership by opening the Binnig and Rohrer Nanotechnology Center.
Google operates its largest research facility outside the U.S. in Zurich with 4,000 em-ployees. In choosing Zurich as a research site, ETH alumnus Urs Hölzle proved instru-mental.
Disney Research Studios in Zurich, led by ETH Zurich Computer Science professor, Markus Gross, has made numerous contributions to Disney movie productions and has even won two Tech Oscars for its technological innovation.
Zurich is a place where academia meets industry in close cooperation, creating a highly de-sirable talent ecosystem that fosters an understanding of the needs of society, enables re-searchers to address such needs, and facilitates knowledge transfer. Such an ecosystem perpetuates a positive feedback loop that attracts even more top students to professors and top industries.
Cooperating with the Competition
The other leading technical university in Switzerland, also an entity of the Swiss Federal Gov-ernment, is the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, in short EPFL. The dynamism and excellence of its younger sister institution continuously inspires ETH Zurich to improve - a positive effect of a competitive dynamic. ETH Zurich is part of the ETH Domain, which con-sists of the two technical universities, ETH Zurich and EPFL, as well as of four research agencies, among them the Paul Scherrer Instiute (PSI). ETH relies on a global network with more than 9,000 research contacts and a close cooperation with Swiss institutions, including for example, the University of Zurich, the Zurich’s University Hospital in medicine, as well as with leading pharmaceutical firms such as Roche or Novartis in the field of biology. In addition, Dr. Mesot keeps a network of contacts with top administrations in around 20 or so of the world’s leading academic institutions.
ETH Zurich’s Campuses and Historic Buildings
Classified as historic, some of ETH Zurich’s buildings are difficult and expensive to maintain. Making modifications to ETH Zurich’s world-famous main building in the center of Zurich falls into this category.
As buildings and research infrastructure represent a long-term investment, ETH strives to construct buildings of high quality. In recent years, sustainability has become a key criteria for the university’s whole real estate portfolio. The Anergy Grid, an underground storage system, was developed at ETH’s Science City campus in Hönggerberg. Since the Anergy Grid began operating in 2013, it has continued to expand. In constructing the Anergy Grid, ETH Zurich is building a dynamic system towards reduce CO2 emissions from heating and cooling to meet the goal of an 80% reduction by 2040. In 2019, the system consisted of three underground storage units and five sub-stations that supply 14 building clusters with heat and cooling.
While there are large auditoria, undergraduate teaching of basic disciplinary foundations pri-marily takes place in smaller rooms, and is heavily discussion driven. Concepts such as flipped classrooms have been introduced at ETH, and online teaching tools have become an integral part of the school’s teaching endeavors.
Funding Research
ETH Zurich, as well as EPFL, are indeed “elite” academic institutions, both among the best in the world. They both receive the bulk of their funding from the Swiss Federal government. Yet, an increasing part of the budget comes from third party contributions, in fact close to 30% in the case of ETH in 2019. Although the two Federal universities differ in a number of aspects from the rest of the Swiss Higher Education system, their funding is negotiated every four years within the Dispatch on the Promotion of Education, Research and Innovation (ERI Dispatch).
There has been a tendency for governments as well as for other institutions, such as the Eu-ropean Union (EU), to provide specific support to freestanding research projects. This might have unintended consequences by making it more difficult for basic research to obtain fund-ing. It is however essential for world-leading institutions such as ETH to be able to carry out strong fundamental research. The ETH Foundation therefore, plays an important role in creat-ing philanthropic opportunities and raising essential funding resources.
The Student Base
There are 26 cantons in Switzerland, all with their own educational systems. While some can-tons may be stronger than other cantons, when it comes to teaching “the basics”, ETH Zurich accepts every student who has earned a Swiss “Maturität.” Unlike most universities in the world, ETH Zurich does not have an entrance exam. The benefit is equal and open access to higher education, but the consequence is a quite a large attrition rate at the end of the first year – as much as 50%! Students who do not succeed in the first year are afforded a second chance to pass their first year exams. While some 85% of the students seeking a Bachelor’s degree have a Swiss educational background (with instruction offered only in German at the undergraduate level), one-third of the student body at the Master’s level (with instruction pri-marily in English) comes from abroad. At the doctoral level, over 70% of students are foreign nationals.
While ETH Zurich’s students are highly valued for their scientific expertise, the institution acknowledges some weaknesses in social and communication skills. Therefore, new cours-es and interdisciplinary project work such as the aforementioned ETH Week have been de-signed to improve the overall capacities of ETH students.
The Singapore-ETH Center and Research Hub
Established in 2010, the Singapore-ETH Center is ETH Zurich’s only research center outside of Switzerland. The center strengthens the research capacity of ETH Zurich, by developing sustainable solutions to global challenges in Switzerland and in the world. Set in southeast Asia, in a rapidly growing urban region, the Singapore-ETH Center aims to provide practical solutions to some of the most pressing challenges regarding future urban sustainability, nota-bly smart cities, resilient systems, and future health technologies. Breaking down disciplinary “silos” by establishing thematic-oriented research objectives ensures a strong focus on teamwork that might serve as a model for the university’s main activities in Zurich.
The Historical Frame of Reference that led to ETH Zurich
Alfred Escher, whose 200th birthday was celebrated in 2019, was instrumental in the founda-tion of ETH Zurich or, as it was called in 1855, the “Polytechnical School”. Escher, and unta-med entrepreneurial spirit, was a man of many talents. He is well known for his work in initiat-ing the construction of the Gotthard tunnel that connects the north and the south of Switzer-land. Escher had a long-term, strategic perspective and thought “big.” He was aware of the fact that for young Switzerland to become an industrialized nation, the country needed engi-neers, money and a way to manage risks. From these needs, he formulated the creation of ETH Zurich, the Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (today: Credit Suisse), and the Rentenanstalt (today: Swiss Life). In all of these enterprises, Escher played a crucial role.
Perhaps during Escher’s time, fewer barriers stood in the way of launching far-reaching com-plex projects in higher education, banking and insurance such as the ones just described. Today’s society has become far more complex, regulated and controlled in these matters, but in terms of innovation and technology, Switzerland is poised to set the standards. Access to big data, artificial intelligence and powerful algorithmic computing power has created novel possibilities for society, and ETH Zurich is at the forefront!
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