ETH Zurich - The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich - Profile by David Bradley

Operated by: The ETH Board

President of the ETH Board: Professor Dr Olaf Kuebler

Location: Zurich, Switzerland

Founded: 1854 by the Swiss Confederation during the industrialization of the country

Employees: ETH comprises 83 institutes and laboratories with some 340 professors and about 840 lecturers are supported by some 8000 staff. There are 12390 registered students and each year some 1200 receive an ETH diploma and a further 500 complete a doctorate
 

The ETH opened its doors in Zurich in 1855. It began life as a university of applied sciences, offering courses in architecture, civil engineering, forestry science, mechanical engineering and chemistry, and also had a department of humanities, social sciences and political science. New departments were soon added. In the 1960s ETH Zurich moved into additional premises in Zurich-Hoenggerberg, and this facility is currently being expanded even further. Until 1969, it was the only national university in Switzerland. Today, it is part of the wider ETH domain under which two universities in Zurich and Lausanne (the EPFL, Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne) and four national research institutes, PSI, WSL, EMPA and EAWAG, reside. The ETH "domain" thus plays a leading part in basic and applied research, in teaching, innovation and services in the public sector. According to the ETH Board "These institutions also achieve world-class results in the promising, future-oriented disciplines of life sciences, nanotechnology and communications technology." Their claim seems to be well founded and provides the success that underpins ETH's future.

The Swiss Federal Council assigns the ETH Board a performance mandate every four years. The Board then manages the two National Universities and the other research institutions through performance agreements. Their objectives are clear - primarily the two universities exist to carry out top-quality teaching, research and services carried out at international standards. Secondly, the ETH Board must create an optimum environment for teaching staff, researchers and students. Other aims include intensifying collaboration with other Swiss research bodies as well as internationally with some degree of focus on technology transfer, all in an equal opportunities environment for women and men.

The primary objectives of the current strategic plan for 2004-2007 will ensure that the ETH Board is successful in its mandate. These simply put lay down reforms in teaching at the tertiary level, including the introduction of graduate programmes which will be more closely tied to research at ETH. The current degree model will be replaced by a new curriculum by 2005. There will also be an effort to make research even "more dynamic" and to fill leading-edge research positions.

While the ETH umbrella carries out research in almost every arena, we will focus on The Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH. This is perhaps one of the most prestigious research and teaching centres in chemistry in the world. It has an international faculty of some 37 research professors (assistant, associate, and full professors) under which about 600 doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows from more than 26 countries are currently working. These figures make the Department one of the largest of its kind and has been described as having "some of the finest research and teaching facilities" in the world. Indeed, Some of the biggest names in chemistry are presently associated with ETH - Albert Eschenmoser, Jack Dunitz, Alfons Baiker, Willem Koppenol, François Diederich, Dieter Seebach, Roel Prins, Richard Ernst, Wilfred van Gunsteren, Kurt Wuethrich. ETH is proud of its run of Nobel chemistry laureates some of whom are cited above but who also include: Vladimir Prelog (1975 winner), Hermann Staudinger (1953), Peter Debye (1936), Paul Karrer (1937), Richard Kuhn (1938), Leopold Ruzicka (1939), Alfred Werner (1913), Richard Willstaetter (1915), and of course Fritz Haber (1918).

ISI statistics support ETH's current position as one of the most important research centres for chemistry in the world. It always ranks highly in their citation analyses. And, at the individual level many of its researchers rank highly. Willem Koppenol who has been with ETH Zurich since 1994 is head of the Bioinorganic and Solution Chemistry Group has one of the top 15 most-cited papers in his field (Peroxynitrite, a cloaked oxidant formed by nitric oxide and superoxide, Chem. Res. Toxicol. 1992, 5, 834-842).

http://www.ethz.ch/index_EN