News from the Executive Board 2023/5

At its last meetings, the Executive Board of ETH Zurich dealt, among other things, with new appointments to the Vice Rectors, the?Ethics Commission and the Science-?Policy Advisory Board.

The Executive Board of ETH Zurich.
The Executive Board of ETH Zurich. (Photograph: ETH Zurich / Markus Bertschi)

New Vice Rectors for Study Programmes and Curriculum Development elected

The Executive Board has appointed two new Vice Rectors: Markus Bambach (Professor of Advanced Manufacturing, D-MAVT) will assume the office of Vice Rector for Study Programmes as of 1 July 2023. He succeeds Lorenz Hurni (Professor of Cartography, D-BAUG), who has held this office for five and a half years and is stepping down from it as of 30 June 2023.

The Executive Board has also appointed Jan Vermant (Professor of Soft Materials, D-MATL) as Vice Rector for Curriculum Development. Jan Vermant will take over this office as of 1 September 2023 from Andreas Vaterlaus (Professor for Physics and Education, D-PHYS), who is resigning on 31 August 2023 after almost 11 years as Vice Rector for Curriculum Development.

The Executive Board sincerely thanks Lorenz Hurni and Andreas Vaterlaus for their valuable contribution and wishes Markus Bambach and Jan Vermant a good start in their new function.

By-elections and new elections to the Ethics Commission

The Executive Board has elected the following persons as new members of the Ethics Commission for the term of office from 1 June 2023 to 31 May 2027:

  • Yoan Hermstrüwer, Professor of Legal Tech, Law and Economics, and Public Law, University of Zurich
  • Christina Spengler, Head of the Exercise Physiology Lab at the Institute of Human Movement Sciences and Sport, D-HEST
  • Michael Stauffacher, Co-Director of the Transdisciplinarity Lab, D-USYS.

Petra Schmid, Professor of Organizational Behavior, D-MTEC, has been elected for the term of office from 1 June 2023 to 31 May 2025.

In addition, Mathilde van Ditmars from the Department of Political Science of the University of Lucerne will support the Ethics Commission as an additional member from outside ETH. She has been elected for the term of office from 1 February 2024 to 31 January 2028.

Kai-Uwe Schmitt and Angela Frotzler stepped down from the Ethics Commission of ETH Zurich at the end of May 2023. Kai-Uwe Schmitt had been on the Commission since 1 January 2010 and Angela Frotzler since 1 February 2022. The Executive Board would like to thank them for their services.

The Ethics Commission assesses the ethical tenability of research projects involving human participants or their data at ETH Zurich. It is made up of at least eight representatives of the disciplines medicine, law and ethics as well as those disciplines from which the applications and issues to be dealt with largely come. It also includes at least one member from outside ETH. The Executive Board elects the members of the Commission for a term of office of four years.

New Science-Policy Advisory Board established

The collaboration of science with public administration and policymakers is a core pillar of knowledge transfer that is set to gain further importance in the future. In order to advise the Executive Board on issues at the interface of science and politics, a new Science-Policy Advisory Board has been established. This will evaluate the work and activity of ETH Zurich at the interface to politics and make recommendations for the further development of this area.

The Executive Board has appointed the following persons as members of the Science-Policy Advisory Board:

  • Kathrin Arioli, Zurich Cantonal Chancellor
  • Hannes Germann, President of the Association of Swiss Communes, Member of the Council of States of Canton Schaffhausen
  • Servan Grüninger, President of Reatch
  • Armin Grunwald, Head of the Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Head of the Office of Technology Assessment at the German Bundestag
  • Benedikt Knüsel, Head of the Science-Policy Interface unit, ETH Zurich
  • Erika Laubacher-Kubat, Head of the Strategic Management Support Section, Federal Chancellery
  • Bernard Lehmann, Chair of the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition of the FAO, Chair of the Science and Policy Platform of the Swiss Academy of Sciences, former Director of the Federal Office for Agriculture, former ETH professor
  • Johannes Mure, Head of Strategy and National Relations, State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation
  • Robert Perich, Director of the Swiss School of Public Governance, ETH Zurich
  • Sonia Seneviratne, Associate Vice President for Sustainability, ETH Zurich
  • Andreas Wenger, Director of the Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich

Regular updates from the Executive Board

The Executive Board of ETH Zurich holds regular meetings every two weeks. This section provides information on the most important decisions taken at these meetings.

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