When computers independently identify bodies of water and their outlines in satellite images, or beat the world’s best professional players at the board game Go, then adaptive algorithms are working in the background. Programmers supply these algorithms with known examples in a training phase: images of bodies of water and land, or sequences of Go moves that have led to success or failure in tournaments.

ETH Zurich can once again look back on a successful year of spin-offs: as in 2015, a total of 25 new companies were incorporated in 2016. This is thus the tenth time in a row that over 20 spin-offs have been founded at ETH in a single year – a unique achievement in Switzerland’s higher education landscape. Furthermore, ten of the newly founded ETH spin-offs were created through the Pioneer Fellowship programme.

80% of all products in the chemical industry are manufactured using catalytic processes. Catalysis is also indispensable in energy conversion and storage and the treatment of exhaust gases. Reactions between substances are triggered or accelerated by an additional substance, the catalyst. It is important for these processes to run as quickly and efficiently as possible; that protects the environment while also saving time and conserving resources...

Researchers led by ETH Professor Martin Fussenegger at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) in Basel have produced artificial beta cells using a straightforward engineering approach. These pancreatic cells can do everything that natural ones do: they measure the glucose concentration in the blood and produce enough insulin to effectively lower the blood sugar level. The ETH researchers presented their development in the l...

Researchers from the Institute for Biomedical Engineering, which is operated jointly by ETH Zurich and the University of Zurich, have succeeded in measuring tiny changes in strong magnetic fields. In their experiments, the scientists magnetised a water droplet inside a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, a device that is used for medical imaging. The researchers were able to detect even the tiniest variations of the magnetic field...

  Butterfly wings are a prime example of how flexible and elastic materials can be extremely water-repellent. The relationship between elasticity and water resistance has now been described for the first time by researchers at ETH Zurich. The finding could help to improve water-repellent textiles for use in tents or clothing.

An international team of researchers has developed a novel means of producing coloured coatings for metals. The colours are produced by a special nanometre-sized structure in the coating material. In contrast to other existing structural colours, this new production process can be applied very simply over a large area. The colours are also particularly intense and the material highly scratch-proof.

ETH researchers have received this year’s Swiss Technology Award for their technology “Mesh Mould”, winning the most important Swiss prize for innovation and technology transfer in the “Inventors” category. Innovation, technology – and construction: at first glance, these aren’t things that go hand in hand. The construction industry is not renowned for its groundbreaking inventions, and anyone who me...

Many creative minds dream of outer space – in Switzerland too. While Switzerland will not be sending any of its own rockets into space, it does make a major contribution to space technology and its universities and startups make it a world leader in cutting-edge technology. That is why the European Space Agency (ESA) approached Switzerland’s State Secretariat for Education and Research and Innovation (SERI) to establish a Business Inc...

A team headed by scientists from the Department of Biosystems at ETH Zurich in Basel has developed a cell culture technology platform for testing interactions between chemical and pharmaceutical compounds and 3D body tissue samples. While conventional cell culture experiments are performed using a 2D cell layer in a petri dish, the new technology relies on a chip that accommodates small 3D tissue spheroids that are barely half a millimetre i...

Doctoral student Carla Minas, from the Complex Materials group led by ETH Professor André Studart, has succeeded in creating a highly porous and yet extremely robust ceramic material, which she “printed” using an additive manufacturing process. The trick here was to use an “ink” consisting of a stable ceramic emulsion that did not collapse during or after printing. Using this technique, it is possible to manufacture...

Astronomers set up two theories explaining how gaseous giant planets like Jupiter or Saturn could be born. A bottom-up formation mechanism states that first, a solid core is aggregated of roughly ten times the size of the Earth. "Then, this core is massive enough to attract a significant amount of gas and keep it," explains Judit Szulágyi, post-doctoral fellow at the ETH Zürich and member of the Swiss NCCR PlanetS.

Life without the internet, mobile phones and constant connectivity? Almost unthinkable for many of us. The digital revolution is having a growing influence on our everyday lives and opening up a whole host of new possibilities, but we've only scratched the surface of what digitalisation can offer. That’s why ETH Zurich scientists are carrying out research into technological developments in various areas every day.

Researchers at ETH Zurich’s Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering (D-BSSE) in Basel have created a cyborg – a hybrid creature that is part machine and part living organism. The organism in question is the E. coli bacterium, which is used frequently in biological research; the machine is a computer fitted with the most modern control technology that regulates the growth of the bacteria.

A child swings on a swing, gaining momentum with its legs. For physicists, this is a reasonably easy movement. They call it parametric oscillation. Things are getting more complicated if – in addition to the child’s efforts – the mother (or the father) is around to push the swing. The interaction between the pushing force and the parametric oscillation can become very intricate, making it hard to calculate how much force the par...

An interdisciplinary team of scientists from ETH Zurich has developed a microscopy technique that allows researchers to measure in great detail the forces exerted by biological cells when they grow, change shape or move around. The technique is an advancement of traction force microscopy (TFM). With it, researchers are able to measure cell forces readily, directly and at a higher resolution than with previous methods.

The exoskeleton VariLeg is the work of an interdisciplinary team of 11 ETH students and doctoral candidates. The first prototype was developed by nine Bachelor’s students from the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering in the course of a focus project from autumn 2014 to spring 2015. The exoskeleton, which will now be put into action at the Cybathlon, is a further development of this prototype and grew out of a subsequent focus pr...

Richard Fleischner, who directed the 1966 cult film Fantastic Voyage, would have been delighted with Bradley Nelson’s research: similar to the story in Fleischner’s film, Nelson wants to load tiny robots with drugs and manoeuvre them to the precise location in the human body where treatment is needed, for instance to the site of a cancer tumour. Alternatively, the tiny creatures could also be fitted with instruments, allowing operatio...

One in six people will suffer a stroke in their lifetime. In Switzerland alone, stroke affects 16,000 people every year. Two thirds of those affected suffer from paralysis of the arm. Intensive training can – depending on the extent of damage to the brain – help patients regain a certain degree of control over their arms and hands. This may take the form of classic physio- and occupational therapy, or it may also involve robots.

If one looked deep into three different solids using a super-microscope, one would, in principle, always see the same thing: atomic nuclei arranged in a crystal lattice and electrons, of which some orbit the atomic nuclei and others criss-cross the entire crystal lattice. Nevertheless, those three materials might behave very differently when an electric voltage is applied to them.