News
A Trojan horse for artificial amino acids
Researchers led by Maximilian Fottner and Kathrin Lang have succeeded in introducing large quantities of unnatural amino acids into bacteria, enabling the creation of innovative and highly efficient designer proteins. These can be used as more efficient catalysts or more effective drugs.
Departures at D-CHAB
At its meeting of 3 and 4 December 2025, the ETH Board appointed new professors and informed about departures. Professor Renato Zenobi, Full Professor of Analytical Chemistry, is to retire at the end of July 2026. Zenobi joined ETH Zurich in 1995 and has been a full professor since 2000. The award-winning scientist has made groundbreaking contributions to mass spectrometry and nanoscale chemical analysis, in particular through the development of tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (TERS).
Get to know our four new excellence scholarship holders
The Excellence Scholarship & Opportunity Program (ESOP) of ETH Zurich promotes outstanding students every year. They receive support from the donors of ETH Foundation for their Master's studies so that they can concentrate fully on education and research. In the D-CHAB this year, four students were able to convince the jury: Luca Hegner, Julia Knuchel, Lukas Rost und Victor Ribeiro Sanctis. In this article, they briefly introduce themselves.
Spark Award 2025: from pollutant to raw material
The prize for the most promising invention developed at ETH Zurich last year has been awarded to a research team from the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry. The scientists received the Spark Award 2025 for a novel process for converting common global pollutants into industrial raw materials.
Good teaching through personal dialogue
Senior Scientist Marc-Olivier Ebert discovered his passion for analytical chemistry during his doctoral studies at ETH Zurich. After completing two postdocs, he returned to ETH in 2008 and has been successfully passing on his knowledge to students for over 10 years. Now, he received the Golden Owl Award for excellence in teaching from VSETH. In this interview, he talks about ominous blackboards, personal learning processes, Richard Ernst's lectures, his love for NMR, and ideal teaching.