MTEC Day 2019

The MTEC Department honoured its MSc, MAS, and doctoral graduates at this year’s MTEC Day on 25 October 2019. MTEC Day is an annual event that aims to strengthen personal and professional relationships by gathering together graduates, alumni, faculty, and key stakeholders from business and academia.

29.10.2019 by Sonja-Vera Ripperger

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Enlarged view: graduates-mtec-day-19 — Graduates MTEC Day 2019. (Image: ETH Zürich / Sebastian Wagner)

About 110 graduates and 310 family members, alumni, faculty, and guests participated in the celebrations of this year’s MTEC Day at the ETH Main Building. Congratulations were conveyed by D-MTEC professors Florian von Wangenheim, Stefano Brusoni, Torbjörn Netland, and Antoine Bommier, as well as by the ETH Vice-Rector for Doctoral Studies, Professor Antonio Togni. Keynote speaker Melis Sawerschel, founder of “She Is Rebel”, contributed an impressive key-note on the theme of “Aligning Personal and Professional Values”. In two other energising speeches, D-MTEC graduates Ruifu Jasper Shi and Bojana Kacar Stupar shared experiences and impressions from their D-MTEC studies.

Awards and Prizes

MTEC Day was also the occasion to honour outstanding academic work, including Master’s and doctoral theses.

The Willi Studer Prize and the MAS Excellence Award were awarded for the best overall study performance, as indicated by the highest Grade Point Average (GPA), to the following students:

MSc graduate Leonie Bauer (Willi Studer Prize), whose Master’s thesis, “Methodological approaches to the analysis of disaster responses on social media: Quantifying collective attention and sentiment dynamics from Instagram posts”, was supervised by Professor Frank Schweitzer, Chair of Systems Design;
MAS graduate Christine Sieber (MAS Excellence Award), whose Master's thesis, “Differenzierte Betrachtung der Beschaffungslogistik und Warenflüsse von milchfremden Rohmaterialien in der Molkereiindustrie”, was supervised by Professor Torbjørn Netland, Chair of Production and Operations Management;
MAS graduate Alexander Intlekofer (MAS Excellence Award), whose Master’s thesis, “Managing employee turnover at Axetris AG”, was supervised by Professor Gudela Grote, Chair of Work and Organizational Psychology.

The authors of the best MSc Master’s theses and outstanding doctoral theses were honoured with ETH Medals, as follows:

MSc graduate Julian Senoner, for his Master’s thesis, “Productivity gains through data science in manufacturing”, supervised by Professor Torbjørn Netland, Chair of Production and Operations Management;
MSc graduate Colin Yao, for his Master’s thesis, “Nutrition avat (AR) 3D”, supervised by Professor Elgar Fleisch, Chair of Information Management;
Dr Katharina Erhardt, for her doctoral thesis, “On the heterogeneous effects of trade and fiscal policy”, supervised by Professor Peter H. Egger, Chair of Applied Economics: Innovation and Internationalisation;
Dr Marie-Charlotte Guetlein, for her doctoral thesis “Essays on decision-making under risk and ambiguity in theory and laboratory experiments”, supervised by Professor Antoine Bommier, Chair of Integrative Risk Management and Economics;
Dr Amulya Tata, for her doctoral thesis “Managerial cognition, search and strategy: essays on microfoundations”, supervised by Professor Stefano Brusoni, Chair of Technology and Innovation Management.

ETH Medal for Dr Amulya Tata. Image: ETH Zürich / Sebastian Wagner
ETH Medal for Dr Marie-Charlotte Guetlein. Image: ETH Zürich / Sebastian Wagner ETH Medal for Julian Senoner. Image: ETH Zürich / Sebastian Wagner ETH Medal for Colin Yao. Image: ETH Zürich / Sebastian Wagner Willi Studer Prize for Leonie Bauer. Image: ETH Zürich / Sebastian Wagner MAS Excellence Award for Christine Sieber. Image: ETH Zürich / Sebastian Wagner MAS Excellence Award for Alexander Intlekofer. Image: ETH Zürich / Sebastian Wagner

^{Images: ETH Zürich / Sebastian Wagner}

We congratulate all award winners and graduates and wish them all the best for their professional careers and in their private lives.

Welcome to ETH Alumni

Towards the end of the ceremony, Dr Isabel Spicker, D-MTEC Coordinator Further Education & Alumni Relations officially bid farewell to the graduates and invited them to stay in touch with the department. Luka Manola, D-MTEC alumnus and board member of the ETH Faculty Alumni group Engineering & Management EAEM, Nicolas Rohner, President EAEM, Daniela Häni, Vice President of the MAS MTEC Faculty Alumni group, and Nicole Frick, Executive Manager of ETH Alumni, welcomed all the graduates as ETH Alumni. Niklas Friederici, President of external page OBIS, introduced the external page MTEC Student Innovation Fund. This fund was developed by D-MTEC students in cooperation with D-MTEC alumni, the department, and external page ETH Foundation to enable students to benefit from skills and experiences derived from learning outside the traditional classroom setting. More concretely, the funding ensures that the study trips will continue to be financed, that more students will be able to afford to attend international conferences, and that extracurricular ideas and projects will be able to be carried out.

Contributions to the external page MTEC Student Innovation Fund are welcome from alumni and friends of the department. It was wonderful to see that the response of the MTEC Day attendees resulted in a four-digit contribution. All of this funding will be invested in student-led projects.

Networking

Finally, the MTEC Department invited the graduates and their families and guests for drinks and snacks in the ETH Main Hall. This Apéro offered the opportunity to network with D-MTEC faculty and staff, the external page ETH Foundation and the ETH Alumni Association, and provided the perfect finish to a well-deserved graduation ceremony.