Gregor Hagedorn

Innovating Industry and Research Is it possible to demonstrate the value of diversity in ways that are not financial? Where is the future of industry and research heading? Alison Kennedy of the Science and Technology Facilities Council in the UK and Miriam van Straelen, partner at Roland Berger, join Ruth…

Transforming Universities in Ways that accelerate the Transition to a Sustainable Future. Universities need to become more useful societal partners in solving problems in sustainable development (i.e. problems requiring a dual focus on improving human well-being and protecting the environment). This requires breaking down the “external walls” that separate universities…

The strongest source of free encyclopaedic knowledge is Wikipedia, which currently contains about 6.458.000 articles in English. At the same time, the switch from analogue to digital TV signals and the development of flat screens have made myriads of tube TVs obsolete. A smart combination of these devices can help…

Huiming Bu was talking about humanity’s attempts to keep up with and surpass Moore’s law. In IBM’s case, that entails decreasing the size of chips while increasing their performance and energy consumption. Stacking the chips on a three dimensional plane will improve their efficiency and power the next generations of…

A human and a computer play together, on a grand piano, music for 2 pianists; for example, a Schubert piece. The computer “listens” to the human playing, it recognises, follows, anticipates, adapts to expressive nuances and timing details, adding its own playing decisions, in this way becoming a truly musical…

Genes responsible for antibiotic production are often silent in laboratory setups. Creating semi-natural competitive communities will force bacteria to activate these genes and produce new antibiotics.

The nominating institute Nanyang Technological University on the breakthrough: Infectious agents, including viruses like SARS-CoV-2, can wreak havoc on societies. Frequent testing is essential to minimise their transmission. However, viruses can mutate, edit, or shuffle their genetic material, causing diagnostic assays to fail. To overcome the problem, Meng How Tan…

The MetaGait rehabilitation device, with its innovative combination of hardware (walk stimulation device) and software (virtual reality games), makes rehabilitation less stressful and more effective.

Nurudeen Issa and his team are developing an innovative solar-wind hybrid for households and businesses that will offer renewable energy in an affordable way.

Aldo Steinfeld (PhD University of Minnesota, 1989) is a full professor at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering at ETH Zurich, where he holds the professorship for renewable energy sources. From 2004-2014, he headed the Solar Engineering Laboratory at the Paul Scherrer Institute. At ETH, he was head of…