MTEC News Archive

Many ideas never leave the campus. Yet the world needs that knowledge to improve how organisations, communities, and industries operate. As the Director of the Humanitarian Operations and Supply Chain Management (HumOSCM) Lab, Dr Bublu Thakur-Weigold applies research to where it matters most. We spoke with her about how she makes it work.

New research reveals surprising truths about productivity in European agriculture – and why understanding them matters for resilience and future growth.

A new theory challenges how firms manage AI. Gudela Grote and colleagues published the paper in the Academy of Management Review. They argue that developers, users, and managers must share control and accountability through dialogue, negotiation, and careful design. The result could reshape how we trust AI.

Matej Svaral is the latest recipient of an ESOP fellowship to pursue his Master’s at D-MTEC. He’s not one to do things half-heartedly. Besides studying, he actively participates in the community as MSA co-president and has an ironclad plan for a leadership career after his studies. That may have something to do with being a triathlete, too.

Alejandro Nuñez-Jimenez, a senior researcher at ETH Zurich’s Group for Sustainability and Technology (SusTec), has secured an Ambizione fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). Over the next four years, Nuñez-Jimenez will lead a team in developing a modelling framework capable of simulating policies for net-zero emission technologies from a new perspective.

D-​MTEC wishes you happy holidays and a fantastic start to the new year! 2023 has been another exciting year in our community. Lean back and enjoy this video​collage with some highlights from last year. We are back on 8 January 2024.

On 14 February 2023, EthonAI reported that it had raised CHF 6.27M in seed funding, led by Earlybird Venture Capital and La Famiglia. Incorporated only a year ago, the ETH spin-off provides manufacturers with AI-based defect detection and analysis software.

Anna Kulakovskaya and Stefani Stefanova founded feMTEC, the gender equality association at D-MTEC. Their research may look quite different, but they are united in their determination to fight inequality.

Why do investors punish benchmark-failing companies more than they reward those exceeding their benchmarks? MSc MTEC student Jonas Reinecke spent six months at Stanford trying to find out. His thesis won the Ernst Blickle Graduate award from the SEW-EURODRIVE-Foundation in 2021.

Inflation and education are at the heart of the discussion of a post-pandemic future. Ursula Renold and Jan-Egbert Sturm share their expertise on these issues in interviews. Their expectations are positive.

Jointly initiated by Micheline Calmy-Rey – former member of the Swiss Federal Council – and D-MTEC's Professor Michael Ambühl, ETH Zurich and UNIGE have founded the Lab for Science in Diplomacy (SiDLab). It shall leverage quantitative and computational methods to address the complexity of negotiation problems – both in practice and analysis.

Following troubles in global supply chains, KOF Swiss Economic Institute revised their economic growth forecast for 2021 to +3.2%. The recovery from the pandemic shifts to 2022, says KOF Director Jan-Egbert Sturm.

To recover from the pandemic, subsidies and payments abound globally. Banks lend and buy readily. As they do not face the same increase in regulations compared to after the financial crisis this increases the risk for inflation, D-MTEC's Hans Gersbach says to Handelsblatt.