ICB-Newsletter of January 2021
Welcome
Welcome to the very first Newsletter from the Institute for Chemical and Bioengineering at ETH Zürich. In a year when the world is battling against the COVID-19 pandemic, it is important to take time to reflect on accomplishments and also look forward to new ventures and opportunities in the years to come. I do hope that you enjoy discovering some of the exciting things going on in our Institute, and we look forward to sharing more ICB news with you on a quarterly basis.
Prof. Dr. Andrew deMello
Nanostructured catalysts for sustainable vinyl chloride production
Authors: Selina K. Kaiser, Edvin Fako, Sharon Mitchell, Frank Krumeich, Adam H. Clark, Olga V. Safonova, Nuria López, Javier Pérez-Ramírez
Heterogeneous single-atom catalysts (SACs), containing spatially isolated metal atoms stabilized on solid carriers, have emerged as a promising class of materials to tackle the sustainability goals of the chemical industry. A prominent example is vinyl chloride manufacture via acetylene hydrochlorination, a major industrial process (13 Mton y−1) which relies on highly toxic and volatile mercury-based catalysts, causing severe consequences for human health and the environment. Intense efforts to identify a suitable alternative have mainly focused on gold-based systems, which reached significant activity thanks to the control of their atomic architecture. However, the limited stability of the active Au(I)Cl single atoms leads to catalyst deactivation, thwarting industrial implementation and calling for the development of catalytic systems with improved lifetime under reaction conditions.
To this end, our group has conducted further research on gold SACs and explored the potential of ruthenium and platinum-based systems in acetylene hydrochlorination. By varying the structure of functionalized carbon and use of controlled thermal activation, we derived a platform of carbon-supported gold, platinum, and ruthenium nanostructures, ranging from single atoms of tunable oxidation state to metallic nanoparticles. Combining kinetic analysis, advanced characterization, and density functional theory, we assessed how the individual metal sites determine the catalytic performance, thereby finding opposing particle-size dependencies in Au- or Pt- compared to Ru-based systems (Figure 1a). Similar to the high performance of Au SACs, we identified Pt(II)−Cl single atoms as the active site in Pt catalysts, being 3-times more active than their nanoparticle-based counterparts. On the contrary, ruthenium single atoms are virtually inactive, while ruthenium oxychloride nanoparticles (1.5 nm size) supported on N-doped carbon reach the unrivalled activity of gold-based SACs. Unexpectedly, the active Ru nanoparticles readily undergo redispersion to single atoms under reaction conditions, leading to fast catalyst deactivation (Figure 1b). The latter undesirable process can be inhibited by encapsulating the Ru nanoparticles into a permeable graphene layer, leading to comparable stability to gold-based SACs.
In stark contrast to the high mobility of gold and ruthenium species, platinum single atoms exhibit outstanding stability on non-functionalized carbon supports, surpassing the space-time-yields of state-of-the-art gold-based SACs and graphene-encapsulated Ru catalysts after 25 h time-on-stream, qualifying as best candidate for sustainable vinyl chloride production. Going beyond hydrochlorination, our approach to control the reactivity of Au, Pt, and Ru atoms on carbon supports gives perspectives to tailor metal species to improve a wide range of catalytic applications.
Figure 1. a) Correlation between metal particle size and catalytic activity in acetylene hydrochlorination, expressed as the yield of vinyl chloride monomer (VCM). b) Time-on-stream performance of Au (yellow) and Pt (grey) single atoms (SA) supported on carbon (C) and Ru nanoparticles (NP) with (purple) and without (blue) graphene coating, hosted on N-doped carbon (NC), accompanied by (scanning) transmission electron micrographs.sgffd
Follow the links to read the full story on external pageAu, external pageRu, and external pagePt-based SACs, learn more about external pagesingle-atom catalysis, and get to know catalysis @ace.
The urgent need to meet climate targets together
Author: Valentina Negri
The Paris Agreement defined an ambitious target to limit the temperature rise by 2100 well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. It is nowadays clear that solely reducing the emissions will not be enough to achieve the climate goal sought and, therefore, carbon dioxide removal (CDR) options must be deployed. However, in the Accord, there is no mention of the CDR necessary to meet the target. Recently, an article about nationally determined CDR contributions has been published in Nature Climate Change by Dr. Galán-Martín from the SuperLab group at ETH Zürich and his collaborators from Imperial College London, the University of Girona and the University of Cambridge. The authors examined a set of different equity principles, such as Responsibility, Capability and Equality, to determine the fairest way to allocate CDR quotas to most UNFCCC parties. The team applied these methods particularly to the European Union context, considering various technologies available for CDR. The result of the study led to the conclusion that very different quotas can be determined and that only some countries are actually able to deliver the CDR individually.
Dr. Ángel Galán-Martín said: "The exercise of allocating CO2 removal quotas may help to break the current impasse, by incentivising countries to align their future national pledges with the expectations emerging from the fairness principles."
A cooperative approach among all the Members is essential; however, it must be kept in mind that the deployment of CDR is ultimately dependent on the availability of biomass and the capacity to store the CO2 underground. Additionally, it needs to match the policy-makers and negotiators' agreement.
The deployment of technologies for CDR has already been slower than predicted. Hence, it is time to start allocating fairly the quotas and determine the contribution of each country. Only by working together, via cross-border cooperation, it is possible to reach the climate target.
Are you curious to find out more? external pageRead the full article and visit the website of the SUPERLab
Higher efficiency for cutting-edge QLED display technology
Author: Gerrit Stemmler, partially adapted from Fabio Bergamin
The energy consumption of flat screen technology has been continuously decreasing over the last years: The era of power-hungry cathode-ray tube and plasma displays is long gone and modern technologies like QLED (Quantum Dot Light Emitting Diode) and OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) have significantly reduced energy consumption. At the same time, however, the trend towards increasingly larger screens for home theater experiences raises the electricity demand again. As a result, in 2016 television alone was responsible for over three percent of total electricity consumption in the EU.
With an innovative construction, Jakub Jagielski from the Nanomaterials Engineering Research Group further improved the QLED technology for screens. In his work, he has produced light sources that for the first time emit high-intensity light in only one direction. This reduces scattering losses, which promises improvement of the energy efficiency by up to two times.
Conventional QLED screens consist of a variety of spherical semiconductor nanocrystals, known as quantum dots. When these nanocrystals are excited from behind with UV light, they convert it into colored light in the visible range. The color of light produced by the nanocrystals depends on their material composition and size.
However, these spherical nanocrystals emit light in all directions inside the screen. Due to scattering, only about 20 percent of it is able to leave the screen and is visible to the observer. To increase the energy efficiency of the technology, scientists have developed nanocrystals that emit light in only one direction. Instead of spherical crystals, these sources are composed of ultra-thin nanoplatelets that emit light only in one direction: perpendicular to the plane of the platelet.
If these nanoplatelets are arranged next to each other in a layer, they produce a relatively weak light that is not sufficient for screens. To increase the light intensity, scientists are attempting to stack several layers of these platelets. The trouble with this approach is that the platelets begin to interact with each other, with the result that the light is again emitted not only in one direction but in all directions. In addition, some of the light remains trapped and instead decays into heat emission, which further reduces the light intensity.
In his work, Jakub demonstrated a one-step procedure to obtain stacked layers of extremely thin nanoplatelets (2.4 nanometers) separated from each other by even thinner (0.65 nanometers) insulating organic ligand layers. This insulating layer prevents interactions between the nanoplatelet layers, which causes the platelets to emit light predominantly in only one direction, even when stacked. In addition, he shows that this approach is scalable to higher numbers of layers without significant loss of efficiency.
For more detailed information, please see the ETH News or external pageread the article and visit the website of the Nanomaterials Engineering Research Group
Rescue biopharmaceuticals from evil interactions with interfaces
Author: Marie Kopp
A new method to assess the stability of proteins at interfaces, with implications for the development of safe and effective biopharmaceutics.
The development of successful biologics requires several pillars: efficacy, safety, consistent manufacturing at the highest possible quality standards and affordable costs. To meet these criteria, in addition to activity, biologics must exhibit a variety of quality attributes globally indicated as “developability”. In collaboration with the group of Dr. Nikolai Lorenzen at NovoNordisk (Copenhagen, DK), the Biochemical Engineering Laboratory at ICB is developing new methods to establish the viability of possible candidate molecules. This operation is crucial to reduce risks during later stages of product development and increase the product safety by minimizing potential degradation products. In recent papers published in the journals mAbs and Molecular Pharmaceutics, Marie Kopp, Adriana Wolf Pérez and collaborators describe an accelerated assay to probe the stability of biologics against interfaces, which often trigger the formation of degradation products including particulate materials. Marie Kopp, Fabian Dingfelder and Paolo Arosio will tell more about this assay and other methods to characterize and predict protein aggregation in the upcoming PEGS Europe virtual Protein and Antibody Engineering Summit 2020. These works have been recently featured also in GEN- Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology news: external pagehttps://www.genengnews.com/topics/bioprocessing/assessing-antibody-aggregation/
Learn more about this by reading the full articles in external pagemAbs and external pageMolecular Pharmaceutics
Watching platinum catalysts in atomic resolution
Authors: Oliver Renn & Arik Beck
Catalysts usually consist of valuable noble metals, which are rare and not available in unlimited quantities. Therefore, it is important to optimize the catalyst for the respective reaction. The group of Jeroen van Bokhoven was now able to study a catalyst in atomic resolution and real time, and thereby gaining important new insights.
Heterogeneous catalysis is a key process in the chemical industry, as more than 80% of all manufactured chemicals have a catalytic process involved during their production. Thus, a key towards the transition to a sustainable and environmentally friendly society is the optimization of such industrial processes, also in terms of energy efficiency. The precious metal platinum – of which the world’s resources are scarce – is an important and frequent component of catalysts. In order to effectively improve catalysts, it is a prerequisite that the mechanism of the process is known – otherwise “the improvement of catalysts simply continues to be subject to trial and error”, as Arik Beck, first author of the study which was recently published in Nature Communications, describes it. This is exactly what Jeroen van Bokhoven’s group has now achieved – in collaboration with Xing Huang and Marc-Georg Willinger from ScopeM, the Scientific Center for Optical and Electron Microscopy at ETH Zurich.
Using high-resolution electron microscopy, they were able to monitor the catalytic process live, i.e. in-situ, and gain important new insights into the course of the reaction. Video recordings in atomic resolution make it possible to observe and understand the various process steps in real time. And even individual platinum atoms are visible.
As shown above, a platinum nanoparticle (dark area in the center of the images) is sitting on a titanium dioxide carrier. As the gas atmosphere changes from hydrogen to oxygen, the surface structure of the platinum particle changes. The white bar corresponds to a length of 5 nm, for comparison: the diameter of a hair is about 50 000 nm. These video recordings were made in collaboration with ScopeM, the Scientific Center for Optical and Electron Microscopy at ETH Zurich.
For catalytic processes, platinum is usually distributed as very small nanoparticles (1 to 10 nm) on a metal oxide material as a carrier, the so-called support. In the early days of catalysis, it was assumed that these support materials would act as inert carrier materials. Already 40 years ago, it could be shown, that the support materials are anything but inert, and the phenomenon of a strong interaction with the support material was observed, which was named Strong Metal-Support Interaction (SMSI). This effect plays an important role in catalysis, as it has a substantial influence on the selectivity and efficiency of the process.
As the images above show, a layer of titanium oxide suddenly forms - in less than a second - on the platinum particle. Here you can see how the atomic lattice is first restructured on the side of a particle and then, between 0.31 sec and 0.47 sec, a bright structure suddenly appears on the side. In electron microscopy, bright structures indicate that the atoms have a low mass. Thus, one can distinguish between platinum (heavy and therefore dark) and titanium oxide (light and therefore bright). The grid-like structure that can be seen in the images is the atomic lattice structure. Each point corresponds to an atomic position in crystal lattice.
Metal oxide support materials which are easy to reduce, such as e.g. titanium oxide, can be modified by reductive treatment with hydrogen, making them more efficient for certain catalytic reactions. These modification processes involve the formation of thin layers of the support material on the surface of the platinum nanoparticles, a so-called encapsulation. However, this effect has never been fully understood, as samples of the catalysts taken out from the reactor immediately change, even before further investigation.
Due to ScopeM’s state-of-the-art transmission electron microscopy, the process of overlay formation can now be observed and analyzed in-situ – in atomic resolution and in real time. For the first time, it was possible to observe how the platinum atoms of titanium oxide are encapsulated at high temperatures and how this surface structure changes when the gas, which surrounds the system, is exchanged.
For more information, external pageread the article and visit the website of the van Bokhoven Group
Integrated microlenses and micromirrors
Author: Daniel Richards
A current challenge in the field of droplet microfluidics lies in the transition from bulky and complex optical detection systems to miniaturized, portable devices, whilst retaining the high sensitivity required for precise chemical and biological assays. To this end, Dr. Xiaobao Cao from the deMello group has developed a novel optofluidic approach where miniaturized optical components – mirrors and lenses – are directly integrated around the fluidic channel allowing ultrahigh throughput droplet analysis with high sensitivity.
Optofluidics is a field that aims to combine optical detection components with microfluidics by directly incorporating both into integrated devices. This is an important step towards miniaturization and is necessary to move analysis platforms away from the lab and into smaller and lower-cost devices. Fluorescence detection, which relies on the collection of light emitted by a sample following excitation, is a gold-standard analysis tool in droplet microfluidics due to its high sensitivity and versatility. However, when concentrations are extremely low, highly sensitive optical set-ups and detectors are usually required, which are bulky and costly, and limit parallelization. The challenge for miniaturization is double: optical components are needed to efficiently guide the excitation light onto the microfluidic channel, but also to collect the maximum number of photons emitted by fluorescence and guide them toward the detector.
In this work, Xiaobao and his collaborators have designed a novel optofluidic platform that integrates microlens and micromirror units positioned on opposites sides of a microfluidic channel. The microlenses ensure precise delivery of the excitation light into the flowing droplets, while the mirrors efficiently collect the emitted photons and reflect them toward the detector. With this approach, the amount of fluorescence light collected from flowing droplets is greatly enhanced, by two orders of magnitude, even for ultra-fast droplets. This system brings another key advantage by enabling extensive parallelization. Indeed, because the optical signal is enhanced at the scale of each droplet, it is possible to use a lower magnification objective with a larger field of view, so many parallel microchannels can be imaged simultaneously. The authors demonstrate the utility of this platform by performing a protein expression assay at the single cell level, a challenge known to necessitate both fast and sensitive methods. Here, they assayed the activity of adenylate kinase from a single-cell bacterial encapsulation, with a throughput of 40 000 droplets per second.
This work highlights the effectiveness of micro-fabricated optical components to achieve high-sensitivity and high-throughput optofluidic platforms that can be successfully used for droplet analysis with single-cell capability.
For more information, external pageread the full article and visit the website of the deMello Group
ICB goes Netflix
Author: Robert Grass
Pre-project:
Last spring, I received an E-mail if it were possible to store an episode of a TV series in DNA. We had previously stored a few minutes of a youtube movie at a relatively poor quality in DNA (see Koch et al. 2020), but a full episode would be something quite different. As it turned out, the request was from Netflix, looking for an opportunity of showcasing the topic of their fictional TV series Biohackers in real life. Together with our collaborator Reinhard Heckel (TU Munich) we then set out to find a cost-effective solution to store the full first episode of the series (40 minutes) in DNA.
File-compression, DNA encoding & DNA processing
First, and only after signing various non-disclosure agreements, we were given access to the company’s "high-security" servers with pre-release film material. We were able to download the 40 minute episode as a compressed 65 MB file in surprisingly good video quality. Reinhard Heckel used the code previously developed (Meiser et al. 2020) to encode the digital file in DNA sequences. The code is designed to translate binary data to nucleotides (00>A, 01>C, 10>G, 11>T), and also adds error correction overheads to the data. As current DNA synthesis technology cannot make very long DNA sequences, the data was split into 3.6 Million short and individually indexed oligos.
DNA was synthesized by Twist Biosciences and encapsulated in silica particles using our previously developed encapsulation procedures (see Paunescu et al.) to ensure a long storage life-time. The particles were formulated and filled in 50 reaction tubes, so that each tube contained more than a million copies of the episode as DNA.
Filming:
Only days after finishing the technical part of the project, a commercial film team came to our lab to document the DNA data storage process. This also involved the star of the Netflix series, the Swiss actress Luna Wedler, who was filmed for the documentation outside of our building and in our labs.
Result:
The documentation of the DNA storage process was launched by Netflix on youtube, twitter and instagram to promote the launch of the TV series. Biohackers was a success and got renewed for a second season. We don’t know to what extent this was influenced by our work, but we are sure that this collaboration made our research in chemical and bioengineering highly visible to a very broad audience.
For more informtion, see the external pagevideo on youtube, read the following articles: external pageKoch et al. Nat. Biotechnol. 2020; external pageMeiser et al. Nat. Protocols. 2020; external pagePaunescu et al. Nat. Protocols. 2013 and visit the website of the Functional Materials Laboratory
Top 100 Swiss Startup Award 2020 with two ICB spin-off companies
Author: Alexia Berchtold
Each year since 2011, Venturelab has organized the TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award. The 100 most innovative and promising Swiss startups are picked by a panel of 100 leading investors and startup experts. Each one nominates 10 favorite Swiss startups, less than five years old, with the greatest commercial potential. Each expert chose 10 start-ups, with first place receiving 10 points and 10th place receiving one point. All these individual rankings are compiled to generate the final TOP 100 Swiss Startup Award ranking, which therefore recognizes the startups that have most impressed all 100 jury members.
In 2020, there are two ICB spinoff companies nominated among the top 100 Swiss Startups: Haelixa AG was named for the 3rd time already, while it is a first for Hemotune AG. Many congratulations!
Haelixa AG offers proprietary and innovative solutions to physically mark, trace, and authenticate products from producer to retail creating transparency along the entire supply chain (linear or circular). The solution can be applied to textiles, gold, diamonds, and other products or raw material. Haelixa is B2B and works with retailers, brands, manufacturers, and non-profit organizations. Besides proving claims related to product origin and production, Haelixa protects brands against counterfeiting by providing proof of authenticity and safeguarding the value linked to the brand story, design, processing, and performance.
external pagehttps://www.haelixa.ch
Hemotune AG is developing a radically new approach for therapeutic blood purification that allows to remove endotoxins in a way that is much more efficient and biocompatible compared to state-of-the-art methods. In contrast to using rigid blood filters, hemotune uses tiny, strongly magnetic beads that offer a much larger accessible surface area as well as superior mobility and induce no shear stress on the blood. The whole procedure is carried out in an add-on device to dialysis machines that is connected to the patient’s blood circulation. There, the nanomagnets are administered to the blood, capture the endotoxin and are finally separated from the blood by magnetic forces. Thus, only purified endotoxin-free blood without nanomagnets will flow back to the patient.
Gonzalo Guillén Gosálbez
Interview: Daniel Richards
Dan: Prior to moving to ETH, you were based at Imperial College London. What positive aspects of that environment would you like to bring to the ICB?
Gonzalo: I feel very fortunate that I couldwork at the Chemical Engineering Department of Imperial College, and I still keep an excellent relationship with my former colleagues there. I particularly liked the focus on continuously improving the students’ learning experience and the emphasis on multi-disciplinary collaborations. Having said this, I have to admit that all the institutions in which I worked taught me something, and I would like to take the best of them to explore strategies to improve the ICB. We are already in an excellent positionat the ICB, yet there is always room for further improvements.
Dan: What has been your favourite thing about Zürich / Switzerland so far?
Gonzalo: I think Switzerland is a wonderful place to live, and Zurich is really unique as it combines the advantages of big and small cities in a beautiful environment. The quality of life is extremely high, people have been very friendly to me, and there are plenty of opportunities to visit stunning places and practice outdoor activities. Switzerland also lies at the heart of Europe, so it is very convenient for traveling to other surrounding regions. I am very happy living here.
Dan: Now that you are established here at ETH, where do you plan to focus your research efforts?
Gonzalo: I will focus on applying systems thinking concepts and tools to sustainability problems, with a strong emphasis on fuels, chemicals, and energy systems. We develop mathematical models to guide experimental work more effectively, so efforts can concentrate on improving the most promising technologies. To this end, we are working ona multi-scale approach towards sustainability using the planetary boundaries concept. The goal is to minimize the impact at the Planet level of industrial systems to operate safely within the Earth’s ecological capacity.
Dan: In terms of research, where do you see the ICB as a whole heading over the next 5 to 10 years?
Gonzalo: ICB is very active in the broad area of chemical engineering, including chemical aspects of energy, heterogeneous catalysis, colloid engineering, process systems engineering, nanomaterials engineering and biotechnology, bioengineering, and microfluidics. We will continue to working these areas to address grand challenges connected to sustainable energy, fuels, and chemicals, healthcare, and materials. We are also opening a new position in Digital Chemistry under the umbrella of the NCCR Catalysis project that will strengthen digitalization in (experimental) chemistry and chemical engineering, providing a bridge between different expressions of catalysis and chemical process design research. I am sure we will have a substantial positive impact on academia, industry, and the society. We will witness exciting times ahead.
Dan: What are your main interests outside of your research?
Gonzalo: I like reading, walking, swimming and playing the piano. Unfortunately, I have not practiced these activities lately as much as I would like to, but I plan to devote more time to them.
Nathan Khosla
Author: Valentina Negri
Valentina: What is your name and where do you come from? Can you tell us something about yourself?
Nathan: My name is Nathan Khosla, and I am from the US. One of my hobbies is participating in hackathons, where teams spend a (sleepless) weekend trying to code a cool product or solution to a problem. It's always a fun weekend with friends, and the most innovation solutions can win prizes at the end.
Valentina: How did you end up at ETH? And specifically in Professor deMello's group?
Nathan: I actually came from a job in industry. Last year I was visiting friends in Germany and applying to schools for PhD in the US, so on a whim I looked for professors at ETH and a few other European schools. Andrew responded, so I came down to Zurich for a few days and we met. It seemed like a good fit, so here I am.
Valentina: What do you do? What is your field of research?
Nathan: My current research in the deMello Group is point-of-care diagnostics, focusing on low-cost paper-based microfluidic solutions. My past work has spanned printed electronics, nonmaterial synthesis, and working in bio-produced materials.
Valentina: What are your expectations for the following years?
Nathan: I am trying to have as few specific expectations as possible. In the past I think it has worked better for me to have broad goals and things I want to learn, and see where that takes me. Coming from industry I think I will enjoy having more academic freedom.
Valentina: What can you recommend to our readers?
Nathan: I don't know how qualified I am to give advice, but I will say that one thing I think has benefited me is to just be willing to reach out to people to talk or make connections. More often than not you get at least one good response that can turn into something cool.
Joel Jenni
Author: Robert Grass
Robert: Joel, where are you from?
Joel: I am from Grabs, near Buchs in the Rhein valley (St. Galler Rheintal). I did my apprenticeship in a neighboring village, at the company Werfo AG (now Sulzer Mixpac), after which I stayed in the company for several years and helped educating new apprentices.
I spent most of my free time playing football (soccer). As a junior I played in the „Regionalauswahl“, and then as a senior in a local club in the 2nd and 3rd local division. Apart of playing myself, I was also active as a coach, coaching the junior team. So my life was mostly filled with work and football!
Robert: So that is amateurs? No aspirations of being the next football star?
Joel: Yes, all amateurs! And probably too late to start a professional football career, but sure, even in the level of football I currently play in, there are still some dreamers (laughs).
Robert: So why did you come to Zurich?
Joel: For love. Together with my girlfriend we had a flat in Zurich, and I was looking for a job so that I could live with her in Zurich. I was very lucky to find the post at ETH, which was about 6 years ago.
Robert: And you also left football?
Joel: No! I joined a club in Zurich, FC Wiedikon, where I am still active as a player (defense), but also as assistant coach. We train 3-4 times a week, and have one game. Sadly, due to Corona, we could not finish our last season where we were in the lead and could not advance to the 2nd league. But this season we are still in the lead of our league, so we hope to advance next year.
Robert: How did the Corona-Shutdown in spring affect your work?
Joel: We were completely closed, for a full 7 weeks. We had to close! A few of us were already sent home even earlier, but everyone was at home for a long time. At the beginning I enjoyed that – not having to get up for work every day. But with time it got tough. There is not much work we can do from home, and I like making things at the workshop! My wife (former girlfriend for whom I moved to Zurich) and I took the situation quite serious. We only left the house a few times per week, and tried to do all of our grocery shopping in as little visits as possible. Actually, this made the shopping trips the highlights of my weeks! Also, I was lucky that we could go back to work for a week during the lockdown. For one of the approved corona related projects (local oxygen manufacturing), we built a first prototype.
Robert: Metal working has gone through a massive digitalization, how does that affect your work?
Joel: I'm young, so I don't know anything else than CNC machining, which is the "digital way". For some of my colleagues this is different, they learnt everything by hand and sometimes I wish that I could do some of the manual work they are able to do. However, everyone has his own way of solving a manufacturing problem, and very often it makes most sense to discuss this with others, combining the different expertise and possibilities we have in our workshop.
Robert: How is your job at ETH different from your previous job in industry?
Joel: I really enjoy my job at ETH, it is so much different! We are involved in the design, in the engineering and planning of the machines we make. And of course, in the end we build the individual parts. In industry all of those things are split up to different departments, and the workshop only is responsible for the manufacturing as such. We also work quite closely with the electronics workshop, but also with our neighbors from LAC, LOC and LPC. So, I am surrounded by a small team (4 ICB mechanics), but also by the larger team of the Zentralwerkstatt.
What does this picture represent?
- A: Evolution of the sun halo over the last 3 months
- B: Micrometric islands of copper on indium oxide to study the role of interface in electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction
- C: Absorption into mammalian cells of a new therapeutic protein with improved membrane permeability
