Ten years of exciting ideas and bold projects

What began in 2016 with just two student projects has grown into a flagship initiative for project-based learning – one that now reaches far beyond ETH Zurich. The many success stories linked to the Student Project House owe a great deal to the generosity of its donors.

For innovation to take shape, spaces are needed where students from different disciplines can come together, think outside their curriculum and develop their ideas. And spaces where chance encounters can take place. It was here, for example, that the co-founders of Digit Soil first met in 2018. Today, their spin-off – led by Sonia Meller and Hélène Iven – helps farms optimise fertiliser use. The early stages of Tethys’s underwater drone and Unbound Potential’s novel battery can also be traced back to ETH’s creative workshops. With two SPH locations at their disposal – in the main building and on the Hönggerberg campus – students are free to experiment, build prototypes and make use of equipment such as 3D printers and laser cutters.

The infrastructure continues to evolve in step with students’ needs. Recent milestones were achieved thanks to a generous contribution from the Georg H. Endress Stiftung, which enabled ETH to establish a Life Sciences Lab, and a donation from the ZKB Philanthropie Stiftung that led to the expansion of the Digital Makerspace. This is where students explore and apply technologies such as artificial intelligence and extended reality.

This year also saw the opening of the HSG ETH Student Project House in St Gallen, where the strengths of students from both universities are combined in the best of both worlds. Looking ahead, the next step to be realised with donor support is a Food Lab dedicated to developing agricultural technologies, food processing and products fit for the world of the future.