News from the Executive Board 2025/2
At its recent meetings, the ETH Zurich Executive Board discussed the results of the 2024 scientific staff survey and acknowledged the appointment of two leadership positions.
Survey scientific staff 2024
Since 1 November 2020, ETH Zurich has conducted regular surveys of its doctoral students, expanding these to postdoctoral researchers and established researchers since 1 February 2021. The results of the surveys in 2024 were presented at the last Executive Board meeting.
As in previous years, the results are positive in terms of general satisfaction as well as satisfaction with the scientific and respectful supervision provided by supervisors and the conditions of employment. The salary rates of doctoral students, mental health and supervision/support continue to be fields of action for optimisation.
The heads of departments have received separate reports to implement specific improvement measures.
Svitlana Mayboroda becomes the new Director of the Institute for Theoretical Studies
Christian Wolfrum, Vice President for Research, informed the Executive Board that Svitlana Mayboroda will take over as Head of the Institute for Theoretical Studies (ETH-ITS) on 1 June 2025. Svitlana Mayboroda has been Professor of Mathematics at ETH Zurich since 1 August 2023. Her research areas are geometric measure theory, partial differential equations and analysis.
Her research has broad applications in condensed matter physics, cold atoms systems and in various semiconductor materials and devices. One of her most important projects, for which she collaborates with astrophysicists, is the development of a mathematical theory that will allow them to measure and better understand the structure and dynamics of the universe (see D-MATH-News, 23/09/2024).
Svitlana Mayboroda from Ukraine will succeed ITS founding director Giovanni Felder (2013-2019) and Rahul Pandharipande (2019-2025), both mathematicians. The Institute for Theoretical Studies is an interdisciplinary centre for theoretical sciences which focuses on mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical Computer Science and related fields for visiting scientists and young researchers. Organisationally, the ETH-ITS is assigned to the Vice President for Research. The institute, which was established on 1 June 2013, is funded by donations from the Walter Haefner Foundation and Max R?ssler.
Beat Weibel becomes new head of ETH transfer
Vanessa Wood, Vice President for Knowledge Transfer and Corporate Relations, informed the Executive Board about the appointment of the new Head of ETH transfer. Beat Weibel, an ETH alumnus and a proven expert in intellectual property, has been appointed head of the patent and licensing group at ETH Zurich. The position also includes a 20% teaching assignment.
The 58-year-old European Patent Attorney was born and raised in Zurich. After studying electrical engineering at ETH Zurich, he became interested in patents and intellectual property (IP) and joined the corresponding department at ABB. In the course of his career, he served as Head of Corporate IP at Georg Fischer AG, Head of the IP department at ABB Switzerland and Chief IP Counsel at ABB Ltd. Since 2013, Weibel has headed the Intellectual Property department at Siemens AG.
As a long-standing lecturer in patent law at ETH Zurich, Weibel is familiar with the university. He is currently a guest lecturer at the CAS ETH in Applied Technology, R&D and Innovation. Weibel also teaches at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, at the Technical University of Munich and in preparatory courses for the Swiss Patent Attorney Examination. Furthermore, he is President of the Association of German Patent Attorneys and the European Federation of Intellectual Property Agents in Industry.
Beat Weibel will assume his new role as Head of ETH transfer and lecturer on June 1, 2025.
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