Sustainable materials and structures

Our goal

We want to create three new professorships in three different departments that concentrate on fundamentally overhauling how we produce, use and re-use materials. The focus will be on incoporating sustainability into the very beginning of the value chains for materials, processes and products.

• The professorship for “Sustainable Materials and Devices” addresses the sustainability of both the materials themselves and how they are produced – by optimising processes to reduce the consumption of resources and energy.
• The professorship for “Sustainable Structures” will deploy innovative material systems to develop lightweight structures for transportation, machine tools and robots as well as manufacturing processes that are energy efficient and environmentally friendly.
• The professorship for “Circular Materials for sustainable future infrastructure” focuses on construction materials with a particular emphasis on infrastructure that uses fewer resources and on the recycling of construction materials.

Your support enables

• initial funding for three new professorships at ETH Zurich dedicated to researching how the complete life cycle of materials and structures can be made more sustainable;
• using the new professorships to harness synergies between materials science, civil engineering and mechanical and process engineering with the aim of advancing the circular economy;
• the development of technological advances that fight the consequences of climate change with sustainable, efficient solutions.