June 2020

The Canton of Grisons and the Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL) are establishing a new research centre employing up to 40 people in Davos. From January 2021, the centre will examine social and economic issues connected with climate change, extreme events and natural hazards in mountainous regions. ETH Zurich will also be involved, through two professorships.

Moist surfaces are rapidly colonized by bacteria. This initial colonization seeds the formation of biofilms, bacterial communities encased in a polymeric matrix that play critical roles in many environmental, industrial and medical applications.

ETH Zurich engineers have created a magnetically controllable cilia carpet that can move like a millipede. Watch the following video.

Eleni Chatzi, Professor of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring, uses sensors to feel the pulse of buildings in order to monitor their state of health - a concept that engineers use in analogy to the monitoring of health in life sciences.