How ETH and industry intermesh
This year's Industry Day saw 16 ETH researchers and ETH spin-offs presenting their research projects and activities in a series of brief presentations. Originating in areas such as health & nutrition, data science, mobility & energy and robotics & manufacturing, the focal points were each accompanied by a case study in video form. A well-attended exhibition featuring posters by ETH researchers also encouraged the attendees from industry and the ETH to engage in useful exchanges of experience.
The mobility & energy presentation, for example, demonstrated how rail transport can be optimised: Gabrio Caimi from the Swiss Federal Railways explained how the use of algorithms and operations research methods could both increase capacities and reduce costs. Caimi explained that the partnership between the SFR and ETH had been in existence for a long time, but has intensified: an ETH doctoral student is currently working for the SFR on a part-time basis, while the previous PhD student was recruited by the SFR after completing his doctoral thesis.
Discovering biomolecules using scattered light
The health & nutrition case study saw ETH professor János Vörös and Christof Fattinger from Roche demonstrating how new processes speed up blood and urine tests. Vörös explained how he had long harboured the ambition of facilitating blood tests in situ to avoid lengthy laboratory testing. One day Fattinger approached him with the idea of using molography technology to render even the smallest biomolecules visible using scattered light.
Fattinger, who completed a sabbatical at ETH Zurich in 2011, said that the development would not have been possible without ETH: the research and development occurs in ETH laboratories. The researchers' discovery could change diagnostics, with Fattinger seeing speed as the major advantage of molography: "The quantification of biomarkers using molography is rapid and can even occur in real time."
