Make an impact, shape the future

ETH Zurich and the Dieter Schwarz Foundation have signed a far-reaching letter of intent to establish a new teaching and research centre for responsible digital transformation with a global reach. Thanks to the foundation’s donations, around 20 new professorships are to be created over the next 30 years in Zurich and on the foundation’s teaching campus in Heilbronn.

Thanks to the generosity of our many donors and partners, ETH Zurich has been able to support increasing numbers of talented young people. Our impact report shines a spotlight on excellent Master’s students, ambitious students from financially disadvantaged backgrounds and young researchers with entrepreneurial aspirations.

Since 2009, the Rössler Prize has been awarded to scientists at a decisive stage in their career. The generous 200,000-franc research award – the most highly endowed prize at ETH Zurich – has been made possible thanks to a gift from alumnus Dr Max Rössler.

Artificial intelligence is at work whenever we talk to Siri, get film recommendations from Netflix or interact with ChatGPT. Thanks to donations, ETH Zurich was able to bring its many AI activities under one roof at the AI Center in the autumn of 2020. The Center has already established itself as an important hub for artificial intelligence.

Quantum research is developing at a rapid pace. ETH Zurich is constructing a highly specialized physics lab building in order to further strengthen its position in the field of quantum research. A generous donation from ETH alumnus and Honorary Councillor Martin Haefner brought the plans for these facilities one step closer to fruition.

Every day, thousands of children die of diseases that could have been avoided or treated with simple means. The Botnar Research Centre for Child Health (BRCCH), founded in Basel in 2018, hopes to change this. The new research center is run by ETH Zurich and the University of Basel and was made possible by a donation from the Botnar Foundation of CHF 100 million. The Vice Director of BRCCH is Professor Sai Reddy, whose Biomolecular Engineering professorship at ETH’s Basel-based biosystems engineering department has been funded by the Misrock Foundation.

In this creative hub, ETH students can bring their ideas to life, build prototypes and carry out projects together – maybe even including founding their own company. The Student Project House has been on Hönggerberg campus since 2016, and generous donations in 2018 allowed a second location to be built on the Zentrum campus in downtown Zurich in 2021. The House has already given rise to five young businesses.

The Helmut Horten Foundation has supported Zurich as a hub for medical research for many years. Thanks to their generous funding, ETH has been able to significantly expand its biomedical activities with three professorships: Medical Immunology (Professor Federica Sallusto), Microbiome Research (Professor Shinichi Sunagawa) and the most recent addition as of January 2022, Computational Biology (Professor Pedro Beltrao).

ETH Zurich’s Professor Alexander Mathys researches the development of novel techniques and processes to make food production more sustainable and environmentally friendly. The new assistant professorship for Sustainable Food Processing was made possible thanks to initial funding from corporate donors Bühler and Migros. One of Professor Mathys’s special focuses involves microalgae and the development of suitable production and processing steps. He has established his own microalgae lab for this purpose.

The enormous heat in the Earth’s interior is one of the biggest untapped energy sources on the planet. Professor Martin O. Saar has been conducting research into deep geothermal energy since 2014. His professorship has received significant support from the Werner Siemens-Foundation. Professor Saar is aiming to develop processes that can make geothermal energy an economically feasible source for electricity production in areas that have been unsuitable until now.

Bitten by the entrepreneurial bug: in 2010, ETH Zurich launched the Pioneer Fellowship Program, which supports ambitious researchers as they take their first steps from business idea to market-ready product or service. This not only supports Switzerland’s innovative capacity but also brings research findings to society more quickly. These highly competitive fellowships are primarily financed via donations.

Thanks to the Velux Foundation and other partners, ETH and the University of Zurich were able to acquire a full-body MRI device in this year. Imaging techniques can be used in a rapidly growing number of areas, and the MRI device has enabled promising, sophisticated research projects until this day. The acquisition of the MRI device led to a unique interdisciplinary setup, with basic research and concrete applications, science and private industry, and ETH and the University of Zurich all coming together.