GDK Mentoring
D-BAUG offers a one year mentoring programme to its doctoral candidates.
Goal: The mentoring programme supports young scientists in planning their academic careers, both within and beyond ETH, by providing a mentor in addition to their supervisor. It emphasizes career strategies, opportunities, and professional development rather than discipline-specific topics. The mentor-mentee partnership aims to be mutually valuable and enriching for both participants.
Sign-up for the Kick-off event!
The 2025 mentoring programme will be launched on December 4th 2024 with a kick-off event at ETH Hönggerberg (from 17:30 to 20:00 in HIF C 80) for Mentors and Mentees.
Join us for an engaging session where current mentor-mentee pairs will share their experiences, insights, and strategies with doctoral students and new mentors. To facilitate even better networking, an aperitif will follow, offering the perfect setting for informal discussions and connections. This session is designed to provide valuable guidance on making the most of the mentoring program in the coming year. Don’t miss this chance to connect with our mentoring community and set the stage for a successful year ahead.
Sign-up for the kick-off event writing till November 26th to:
If you are interested in joining the mentoring programme as a MENTEE, please fill in this form.
If you are interested in joining the programme as a MENTOR from Academia or Industry, please fill in this form.
Questions? Write to
Meet our mentors!
Note: this list is continuously being updated as new mentors sign up.
Imad Abdallah
Senior Scientist, ETH Zurich / CEO at RTDT Laboratories AG
Dr. Imad Abdallah joined the Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring in 2016 where he works on the ERC Starting Grant on "Smart Monitoring, Inspection and Life-Cycle Assessment of Wind Turbines" and the BRIDGE funded project Aerosense. Imad’s main research subject is aeroelasticity, multi-fidelity & data fusion frameworks for uncertainty quantification in SHM. Imad started RTDT Laboratories AG as a spin-off effort in May 2022. Earlier, Imad launched FractalFlows (https://fractalflows.com/), a web application to validate scientific claims. Furthermore, Imad is interested in long distance trail running, Crossfit, tennis, Blockchain/cryptocurrencies and politics.
Balz Bauer
Civil Engineer / Director Bridges, Basler & Hofmann AG
Balz Bauer has been working at Basler & Hofmann since 2011, right after completing his master’s degree in civil engineering at ETH Zurich. He became the leader of the bridges team in 2020 and will join the management board of Basler & Hofmann in 2024. He is passionate about collaborating with young professionals and supporting their career development and project ownership. He works on various engineering projects, both new construction and the restoration of existing bridges. The digitalization of construction services is another important topic that has posed challenges for the team in the past few years. He also established a presence in bridge competitions with winning the competition for a pedestrian bridge in St. Gallen as a highlight. He started his career in buildings and moved his focus on bridges in 2013. After working as a site manager for the repair of a motorway bridge for two years, he joined the execution of the project for the new Gotthard railway tunnel as a project manager and was responsible for the construction of several railway bridges. In the last years, he was strongly involved in the construction of the new underground passage of the railway station in Bern, where he is now in charge of designing the structure.
Samira Britschgi
Project Engineer & Manager, Flückiger + Bosshard AG (Download Company portrait (PDF, 2.6 MB))
Download Website, Download CV (PDF, 368 KB)
Since 2016 Samira Britschgi has been a project engineer and manager for Flückiger + Bosshard AG in their Zurich office. She specialises in the structural design and evaluation of both new and existing structures within infrastructure projects and for special structures such as bridges. Samira graduated from ETH Zurich in 2015 with an M.Sc. in Civil Engineering and has gone onto overcome a diverse spectrum of technical and logistical challenges in her professional career. As acting structural engineer, Samira designed and oversaw the execution of a replacement concrete culvert via top-down construction, including the design of a skewed reinforcement layout. Other structural engineering projects include the design of a new 50m long steel prefabricated footbridge at Oberdorf train station, which included the design of two lift shafts as acting supports. Samira has also been acting project engineer on several projects including a feasibility study on a historic footbridge and the complete rehabiliation of the Sihlstrasse with many retaining wall structures and water course passages. Samira’s project management experience includes a 3 year long project for the implementation of corrosion protection measures on two riveted steel bridges owned by SBB. Further aspects from this project include bearing replacements and structural stabilisation works on one of the historic stone abutments. Samira’s diverse and rich industry experience make her a highly suitable candidate as a mentor for this program.
Paolo Burlando
Professor, ETH Zurich
Paolo Burlando is Professor and Chair of Hydrology and Water Resources Management at ETH Zurich (https://hyd.ifu.ethz.ch). He actively carries out research as individual and research group leader in the fields of analysis and modelling of hydrological processes, their importance in catchments, and their interactions with human and environmental systems, with the aim of providing the basis for modern water resources assessment and sustainable planning and management. Among others, he and his research group have contributed to precipitation field analysis and modelling (stochastic modelling of precipitation, extreme value analysis in the frequency domain), distributed hydrologic modelling, global change and hydrology (downscaling of climate scenarios from Global Circulation Models and regional Climate Models, impact of global change on the hydrological cycle and on water resources systems), hydrology of mountain and glaciated regions, hydrology and ecosystem interactions in mountain flood-plains and urban areas.
Giulia Celentano
Scientific Assistant, ETH Zurich
Dr. Giulia Celentano is a Senior Scientific Assistant at the Chair of Sustainable Construction, where she is the focal point for humanitarian construction projects. Her work focuses on sustainable construction strategies in contexts of scarce resources, as: informal settlements, post-disaster and conflict-affected context and refugee camps. She currently manages projects and collaborations with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC), the United Nations (UN-HABITAT, UNHCR) and the Global Shelter Cluster (GSC) covering tool development, sustainability assessments, policy-advisory and strategic guidelines. She holds a Bachelor and M.Sc. in Architecture and Construction from Politecnico di Milano (2009), and a Master level course in Shelter and Settlements in Emergencies from the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC) in collaboration with Oxford Brookes University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at the Chair of Sustainable Construction at ETH Zurich, where she explored "The regenerative development potential of the construction sector in the informal city: the cases of Bangkok, Nairobi and Cape Town", based on field-based data collection and a trans-disciplinary socio-technical approach. She was later a guest researcher at MIT in spring 2022 Prior to joining ETH, Dr. Celentano got hands-on earth construction training in Italy and in Portugal, and started collaborating with diverse NGOs on field-based construction projects in Kenya (Mathare slum, Nairobi), Guatemala (Cerro la Granadilla) and Egypt (Al Qarafa slum, Il Cairo). Besides research and implementation projects, she is involved in teaching at ETHZ in Master, CAS and MOOC programs.
Eleni Chatzi
Associate Professor, ETH Zurich
Eleni Chatzi is currently an Associate Professor, and the Chair of Structural Mechanics, at the Institute of Structural Engineering, of the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering (DBAUG), ETH Zürich. She has obtained her diploma (2004) and MSc (2006) in Civil Engineering, with honors, from the Department of Civil Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). In June 2010 she obtained her PhD Degree with distinction from the Department of Civil Engineering & Engineering Mechanics at Columbia University. In 2010 she was hired as the youngest Assistant Professor in ETH, and was promoted to an Associate Professor in 2017.
Adrian Egger
Software developer, Cubus AG
Dr. Adrian Egger defended his thesis (supervised by Prof. Dr. Eleni Chatzi) in 2019, for which he was awarded the ETH Silver Medal in 2020. Since then, he transitioned to industry and works for Cubus AG, where he develops civil engineering software for both the domestic and international markets. His early academic career began with College in Vancouver and subsequent bachelor and master theses at ETH. During this time, he participated and later presided the concrete canoe club. Throughout his PhD studies he was further entrusted with several teaching tasks and student theses supervisions, which he continues to this day. The aim is to not only impart technical competences, but also to develop individuals so that can effectively convey their findings/ideas. In this spirit of collaboration, he was also invited to the UNSW in Sydney as a Junior Visiting Research Fellow. Further interests include numerical computing in the civil engineering domain, software design, seeing eye dogs, Krisenstab Flughafen Zürich, and aviation.
Helge Fuchs
Supervision of Dams Specialist, Swiss Federal Office of Energy
Since 2020, I am employed at the Swiss Federal Office of Energy to supervise 20 of the large Swiss dams including dam safety inspections, evaluation of annual safety reports and approval of surveillance or emergency action plans. I studied Civil Engineering at Leipzig University (D) where I graduated in 2007. In 2008, I came to ETH Zurich for a Doctorate in hydraulic engineering which I finished in 2013. From then, I was head of the teaching section at the Laboratory of Hydraulics (VAW), gave lectures in Hydraulic Engineering and Hydraulics and supervised a PhD student working on fish downstream migration at run-off river hydropower plants. Besides teaching and research, I was the Vice President of the ‘Association of the Scientific Staff at D-BAUG’ (ASB) and involved in the ‘Politics Team’ of AVETH and the ‘Forum Nachwuchsförderung’ at ETH Zurich.
Dieter Flückiger
Board member, Flückiger + Bosshard AG (Download Company portrait (PDF, 2.6 MB))
Download Website, Download CV (PDF, 1.4 MB)
With ca. 29 years of industry experience Dr. Dieter Flückiger is one of the founders of Flückiger + Bosshard AG and is currently a member of the board. His specialities include the preservation, protection and rehabilitation of existing structures, corrosion and moisture transport of cementious materials. Dieter graduated with a Civil Engineering diploma from ETH Zurich in 1984 and went on to work as a research associate for seven years under Prof. Dr. A. Rösli and Prof. Dr. H. Böhni at ETH. The end of this position saw him successfully defend his PhD at ETH in 1993. Dieter’s career within the industry includes the development of industry practices towards the preservation of structures, specifically for special structures including bridges. As acting project manager, Dieter oversaw many bridge rehabilitation projects, such as the rehabilitation of Hardbrücke Zurich as well as new build projects such as Horgen train station footbridge. Tasks throughout this time included conducting structural evaluations and acting as construction manager. Dieter has also provided his expertise in conceptual studies such as a study from canton Zurich on the topic of surface protection for reinforced concrete. Dieter’s rich and insightful industry and academic experience make him a highly suitable candidate as a mentor for this program.
Othmar Frey
Senior Scientist, ETH Zurich / Gamma Remote Sensing
Othmar Frey received the M.Sc. degree (Hons.: ETH Medal) in geomatic engineering from ETH Zürich, in 2002, and the Ph.D. (Dr. sc. nat.) degree (Hons.: Distinction Award and Prize MNF) in radar remote sensing from the University of Zurich, Zürich, in 2010. From 2002 to 2010, he was a Research Associate with the Remote Sensing Laboratory, University of Zurich. He is currently a Senior Scientist & Lecturer (Faculty) with ETH Zürich and a Senior Scientist with Gamma Remote Sensing AG, Gümligen, Switzerland. He has been working in this joint academic/industry setting since 2011. His research encompasses 2-D and 3-D (tomographic) synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging and interferometric/polarimetric techniques for applications, such as 3-D forest mapping, ground deformation monitoring, and snow layer profiling, monitoring of land surface changes etc. using spaceborne, airborne, UAV-borne, and terrestrial radar sensors. He has been a PI/co-investigator in various national and international research projects. Recently, he has been a PI of an Innosuisse project in which a new car-borne InSAR system for mobile mapping of surface displacements has been developed. At Gamma Remote Sensing, he has also been active in the development of the Gamma Software and in technical/scientific consulting on SAR imaging and interferometric applications to ESA, NASA, and aerospace industry. Dr. Frey was a member of the SAOCOM-CS Science Expert Group with the European Space Agency. Since 2015, he has been the Chair of the Swiss Chapter of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society.
Irena Hajnsek
Professor of Earth Observation, ETH Zurich
Download Website (ETH) / Download Website (German Aerospace Center)
Irena Hajnsek has been Professor of Earth Observation and Remote Sensing at the Institute of Environmental Engineering, ETH Zurich since November 2009. She concurrently heads the Polarimetric SAR Interferometry research group at the Microwaves and Radar Institute, German Aerospace Center – DLR, Germany.
Her research interests focus on electromagnetic propagation and scattering theory, radar polarimetry, SAR and interferometric SAR data processing techniques, and environmental parameter modelling and estimation. She received her Dipl. degree (Honors) in 1996 from the Free University of Berlin, Germany and the Dr. degree (Honors) in 2001 from the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany.
Professor Hajnsek has been the science coordinator of the German satellite mission TanDEM-X since 2010. She served as the Technical Program Co-Chair of the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium in 2012. Since 2013, she has been a member of the IEEE GRSS AdCom and was elected vice president of the IEEE GRSS Technical Committees in 2016.
Ulrike Wissen Hayek
Senior Researcher and Lecturer, ETH Zurich, IRL, PLUS - Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems
Ulrike Wissen Hayek is Senior Researcher and Lecturer (Oberassistentin) at the Chair of Planning Landscape and Urban Systems (PLUS) at the Institute for Spatial and Landscape Development (IRL), ETH Zurich (Switzerland) since 2008. She holds a diploma in Landscape Architecture and Planning from the Technical University of Munich (Germany) and a PhD from the ETH Zurich. Since her PhD thesis on “Virtual Landscapes for Participatory Planning – Optimization of 3D Landscape Visualizations for Information Transfer” (2003 - 2007), Ulrike Wissen Hayek focused her research on developing GIS-based 3D landscape visualizations, evaluating their usability and validity, and implementing the visualizations in collaborative planning processes as well as laboratory experiments. Today, she manages at PLUS the interdepartmental Landscape Visualization and Modeling Lab (LVML) and the AudioVisual Lab (AV Lab) in collaboration with the Chair for Landscape Architecture of Prof. Christophe Girot. Currently, her research deals with large-scale landscape planning and design utilizing LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) data, so-called point clouds, obtained with aerial and terrestrial laser scanning. Her focus is on developing state-of-the-art 3D visualizations and auralizations of landscape changes, e.g., through renewable energy infrastructure, and interactive decision support tools for aiding in the planning of power lines or in assigning riverine zones. In her teaching activities, she brings the visualization principles and approaches into the education program.
Eva Korre
Project Engineer, Dr. Vollenweider AG
Eva Korre graduated from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA) obtaining her Diploma in Civil Engineering in 2011. After acquiring valuable professional experience working on dynamic finite element analysis and shake table testing for SIEMENS AG in Germany, she obtained her MSc from NTUA in 2015. Eva acquired her PhD in Civil Engineering from RPI, Troy NY in 2020, where she specialized in centrifuge physical modeling and focused her research on seismically induced liquefaction. She continued working on research as a Post-doctoral Fellow at ETH Zurich and since September 2023 she has been employed at Dr. Vollenweider AG as a project engineer..
Dimitra Ioannidou
Project Manager, ecoinvent association
Dimitra Ioannidou works since 2019 as a Project Manager at the ecoinvent association and leads projects related to construction sector data and sustainability reporting. She holds a PhD from ETH Zurich on Sustainable Construction (2016). She has a background in Civil Engineering with a MSc in Construction Engineering and Management from Stanford (2008). She worked for four years in the construction sector, in building and highway projects. During her postdoctoral research under a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation, she collaborated with the University of Bordeaux and the University of California, Santa Barbara, working on the issue of scarcity of construction resources.
Mathias Kuhn
Technical Director Digital Planning, Basler & Hofmann AG
Mathias graduated from ETH as a civil engineer in 2007. After working five years as a project engineer in the bridges team of Basler & Hofmann, he moved to Australia where he continued his career with Arup. 2016 he moved back to Switzerland and has now two roles with B&H, one as a project manager for civil structures and the other one as technical director digital planning. Mathias has extensive practical experience as project engineer and project manager but also works at the forefront of digital innovation in his field.
Anita Lutz
Mitglied der Geschäftsleitung Dr. Vollenweider AG, Projektleiterin, Gutachterin SIA, Mediatiorin
Anita Lutz Jahrgang 1963 Nationalität Schweizerin Stellung / Funktion Mitglied Geschäftsleitung, Mitinhaberin Projektleiterin, Expertin, Mediatorin Beruf dipl. Bauingenieurin ETHZ Wirtschaftsingenieurin NDS FH Mediatorin IRP-HSG Gutachterin SIA seit 2020 Fachausbildung ETHZ, Diplom 1988 NDS FH, Diplom 2000 Mediatorin, Kurs 2008-2010, Abschluss 2013 Fachverbände SIA, suisse.ing (Firma), BAUmediation, FBH, GS, SVIN, Bauschlichtung Fachgebiet Grundbau, Geotechnik Berufliche Tätigkeit 1989 – 1990 AJS Allemand Jeanneret Schmid, Neuchâtel seit 1991 Dr. Vollenweider AG, Zürich Fachkommissionen Fachgruppe Baumediation Mitglied, seit 2015, Vizepräs. 2020-2023, Präs. seit 2023 ASTRA Forschung im Strassenwesen, Mitglied Arbeitsgruppe Brücken/Geotechnik/Tunnel, seit 2020 Gremium Gutachter SIA / Gutachterin SIA seit 2018 SIA Kommission Geotechnik, Mitglied 2003-2021, Präsidentin 2012-2021 SVIN Schweizerische Vereinigung der Ingenieurinnen, Vorstand 2008-2016 Usic Regionalgruppe Zürich, Vorstand 2009-2017 .
Charilaos Mylonas
Senior Consultant, Deloitte
I have 10+ years of experience in numerical computing and machine learning, of which 6+ years focused on deep learning. My main passion is bringing value to data through advanced computational techniques. I have planned and produced projects related to several industries and using a large variety of ML techniques. In my doctoral studies, I produced work in fusion of GNNs and stochastic gradient variational Bayes (e.g., VAEs with graphs), I worked with industrial partners to bring additional value to existing lab data and proposed routes to data-driven innovation.
Alexandros Nordas
Senior Researcher and Lecturer, Chair of Underground Construction, ETH Zurich
Alexandros Nordas joined the Chair of Underground Construction at ETH Zurich as a Postdoctoral Researcher in 2020 and is currently a Senior Scientific Associate and Lecturer. He is predominantly involved as expert technical consultant in industrial underground infrastructure projects, the principal being the planned repository for geological disposal of radioactive nuclear waste in Switzerland overseen by Nagra. His research draws motivation from his consulting activities and focuses on the life-cycle computational simulation and hazard assessment of underground systems, time-dependent ground processes, large deformation problems and instability phenomena, and the development of novel design aids for industrial practice. His research interests extend also beyond underground construction, to the areas of computational mechanics, optimisation, and artificial intelligence. Alexandros holds a 5-year Diploma in Civil Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (2013; Honours), a M.Sc. in Earthquake Engineering from Imperial College London (2014; Distinction, top of the department of Civil and Environmental Engineering), and a Ph.D. in Computational Structural Mechanics from Imperial College London, too (2019). He has authored and co-authored numerous technical consulting reports and scientific publications in international, peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. Throughout the years, Alexandros has received several honours and awards in recognition of his academic excellence, including the Telford Premium Prize of the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Letitia Chitty Centenary Memorial Prize, the Patrick J Dowling Prize in Advanced Structural Engineering and a global fellowship between Imperial College London and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.).
Vasileios Ntertimanis
Executive Scientific Collaborator / Lecturer, ETH Zurich
Vasilis Dertimanis was born in Greece. He received a Diploma in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Patras, Greece, and the Ph.D. Degree from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA), Greece, in the area of modeling and identification of faults in mechanical and structural systems. His research interests lie in the areas of structural identification and health monitoring, linear and nonlinear state estimation, active and passive structural control, hybrid testing and optimization. Vasilis has served as a senior researcher in the NTUA Vehicles Laboratory, Machine Design Laboratory and Laboratory for Earthquake Engineering. He has also participated as a Marie Curie experienced researcher to the EU funded SmartEN ITN project. For more than a decade, he has been in parallel self-employed as a freelancer engineer and inspector, as instructor in training seminars on transportation of dangerous goods by road/rail, as well as a measurement engineer and structural vibration analyst. Since January 2014, Vasilis is a member of the Chair of the Structural Mechanics in ETH Zurich and as of January 2022 he is Executive Scientific Collaborator (Leitende wiss. Mitarbeitende), actively supporting the Chair in Research & Teaching.
Natalia Papathanasiou
Consultant, EBP Schweiz AG
I hold a degree in Civil Engineering from a Greek university and subsequently completed a Master's in Transportation Systems at TUM in Munich. Following a period of two years working in Munich in the field of research, I relocated to Zurich to undertake a doctorate in risk assessment for railway networks at the Chair of Infrastructure Management. I subsequently left academia to pursue a career in industry. I spent two years at an engineering company, working in the field of railway planning and construction as a specialist for railway track projects. Since 2023, I have been working as a consultant for rail safety and maintenance management. On a personal level, I live with my partner, an architect, in Zurich, and we have two sons, aged one and two.
Chrysothemis Paraskevopoulou
Assistant Professor, University of Leeds, UK
Download Website, external page LinkedIn
Chrysothemis is a Mining Engineer (MEng) with post-graduate studies (MSc) in Tunnelling & Geological Engineering from NTUA (GR). In 2016, she completed her PhD in tunnelling, which involved working on a joint Research Project between Queen’s University and ETH Zurich. In 2017 she was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Leeds (UK), where in 2019 she got tenure. She has also been appointed as visiting Lecturer at Warwick University (UK) and Adjunct Professor at Queen’s University (Canada). Her research deals with geo-engineering innovative design for resilient and sustainable geo-structures and their societal impact. She has published more than 50 papers in international journals and conferences. She also works as a Consultant and in the past as a Geotechnical/Tunnel Engineer. In September 2022 Chrysothemis became the Director of the prestigious MSc Engineering Geology at the University of Leeds.
She is an active member of the British and Greek Tunnelling Society Young Members Group, the past Vice-chair of the Young Member’s Group (Early Careers Young Professionals) of the International Tunnelling Association (ITA-IATES), and member of ITACUS and ITA-CET committees. In 2020 she completed her MBA at Leeds University Business School as she is a strong believer in life-long training (and other reasons); after all, you can tell from her job title. Sometimes her students call her Dr. Chrysothemis.
When Chrysothemis is not working you will find her spending time with friends and family at her Eden a magical place in Southern Greece. In Greek, her first name (Chrysothemis) means Golden (-Chryso), Natural Law - Justice (-Themis), in case you were wondering.
Isabella Schalko
Research Scientist (tenure-track), WSL and Lecturer, ETH Zurich
Isabella Schalko is a tenure-track Research Scientist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Forest, Snow, and Landscape Research WSL and a Lecturer at ETH Zurich. Since 2020, Isabella is also a Research Affiliate at the Nepf Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). An environmental engineer by training, she studies transport processes in fluvial systems with a special focus on the interactions between flow, sediment, and vegetation. Isabella completed her doctorate in Environmental Engineering at the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology and Glaciology (VAW) at ETH Zurich in September 2018. Prior to that, she received her Bachelor and Master degree in Environmental Engineering at BOKU, Vienna.
Matthias Schartner
Postdoctoral researcher, Space Geodesy
Hello, my name is Matthias Schartner and I'm originally from Austria. I studied Geodesy and Geoinformation at TU Wien where I finished my bachelor's and master's degrees. Afterward, I started my Ph.D. in the field of Space Geodesy. In a nutshell, I was using a global network of radio telescopes to observe radiation emitted from supermassive black holes. During my Ph.D. I contributed and wrote several software packages that are already operationally used worldwide. After finishing my Ph.D. I started a postdoc at TU Wien before obtaining the chance to work at ETH in the Space Geodesy group at D-BAUG. For me, working as a scientist is a perfect opportunity to satisfy my natural curiosity while simultaneously being able to broaden my skills. I love to write software and automate processes, which allows me to contribute to many international collaborations and maintain a big science network. In my current position at ETH, I continue to work with radio telescopes, while I'm also supervising and contributing to projects aiming to improve our understanding of the system Earth via machine learning. After having worked in academia for quite some years, I understand the importance of international collaborations, writing and reviewing publications, as well as being an active member of a scientific community. Although it is not easy to have a successful career in academia while also having a positive work-life balance, it is certainly doable and I hope I can help you in this regard.
Ann Schumacher
Fachexperte Brücken, SBB - Swiss Federal Railways
I completed a BSc in Civil Engineering and a MSc of Structural Engineering, both in Canada, before coming to Switzerland, where I completed a PhD at the ETH in Lausanne (EPFL). I recently also completed a Master of Advanced Studies in Management, Technology and Economics at the ETHZ. I have over 20 years of industry experience ranging from research to private consulting. One of the biggest challenges, but by far also the most rewarding aspect of my life has been, together with my husband, raising three children, while also remaining active professionally.
Eleonora Secchi
Senior Scientist ETH Zurich; SNSF PRIMA Group Leader
Eleonora Secchi is currently the Group Leader of the bioMatter Microfluidics Group at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. She earned a B.A. in Physical Engineering, an M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering and Industrial Chemistry from the Polytechnic University of Milan. From 2014 to 2016, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris, working on measuring water flow from a single carbon nanotube. She was awarded an ETH Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2016. In 2018, thanks to a Swiss National Science Foundation PRIMA grant, Eleonora started her research group. Her research aims to understand the physical mechanisms influencing bacterial biofilms' assembly and behavior. She exploits the precision afforded by microfluidics, combined with visualization techniques borrowed from soft matter physics, to access biofilm's microstructure and rheology, with the ultimate goal of developing innovative strategies to control and engineer biofilm formation.
Benedikt Soja
Assistant Professor, ETH Zurich
Benedikt Soja is Assistant Professor of Space Geodesy at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His research focuses on the application of machine learning in geodesy, in particular related to the application of satellite navigation data for Earth observation. Benedikt started his scientific career in 2013 as a research assistant in the field of geodesy at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam and obtained his Ph.D. from Vienna University of Technology in 2016. He continued his research at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California as a fellow of the NASA Postdoctoral Program. In 2020, he moved back to Europe to establish his current research group at ETH Zurich.
Maarten van Strien
Senior Scientist, ETH Zurich
I am a senior scientist in the chair of Planning of Landscape and Urban Systems PLUS and I specialise in the analysis and modelling of social-ecological systems. I have a background in biology and ecology. I obtained my Masters in the Netherlands after which I continued with a PhD at the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL. At PLUS, I started as Postdoc and later Oberassistent before taking on my current position.
Bruno Sudret
Professor, Chair of Risk, Safety and Uncertainty Quantification, ETH Zurich
Bruno Sudret is a professor of Risk, Safety and Uncertainty quantification at ETH Zurich since 2012. His teaching and research interests are computational methods for uncertainty quantification, reliability and sensitivity analysis, Bayesian approaches for model calibration and reliability-based design optimization, among others. B. Sudret received a master’s of science from the Ecole Polytechnique (France) in 1993. He then obtained a master’s degree and a Ph.D in civil engineering from the Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées (France) in 1996 and 1999, respectively. Dr. Sudret has been working in probabilistic engineering mechanics and uncertainty quantification for engineering systems since 2000: first as a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Berkeley (California), then as a researcher at EDF R&D (the French world leader in nuclear power generation) where he was the head of a group specialized in probabilistic engineering mechanics (2001-2008). From 2008 to 2011 he has worked as the Director of Research and Strategy at Phimeca Engineering (France). B. Sudret is the author and co-author of more than 250 publications in journal and conference proceedings. He currently serves in the editorial board of Reliability Engineering and Systems Safety, Probabilistic Engineering Mechanics and Structural Safety. He promotes the dissemination of uncertainty quantification techniques through the development of the software external page UQLab and the community platform external page UQWorld.
Andreas Taras
Professor of Steel and Composite Structures, ETH Zurich
Prof. Dr Andreas Taras has been Full Professor of Steel and Composite Structures at ETH Zurich since October 2019, with overall responsibility for didactics and research in the application of steel as a structural material at D-BAUG. His research activities focus on the stability and fatigue behaviour of metallic elements, on the use of non-linear analysis methods and artificial intelligence in the design of steel , steel-concrete and steel-timber composite structures, on the fire performance of steel-based structural elements, and on the determination of live loads and their effects in road and railway bridges. He is active in various European and national technical standardisation groups and associations, including SIA, DIN, ASI, CEN and the European Convention for Constructional Steelwork, and his work has led to numerous innovations in Eurocodes 3 and 4. Prior to his appointment at ETH, he was at the Graz University of Technology in Austria, where he obtained his PhD in 2010, and at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich, where he held the professorship for steel construction from 2016. As an engineering design, peer reviewing engineer and technical expert, he also participated in the realisation of various bridges, large-span roofs and metal structures in hydro and wind power plant construction.
Flavio Wanninger
Civil Engineer, Dr. Lüchinger+Meyer Bauingenieure AG
Flavio Wanninger studied civil engineering at ETH Zurich majoring in geotechnical and structural engineering. He joined the chair of timber engineering of Prof. Frangi to write his PhD-thesis titled “post-tensioned timber frame structures”. After finishing his thesis, he co-founded an ETH spinoff company called “Swiss Timber Solutions” that focused on timber structures and fire engineering of such structures. Flavio joined the company of Dr. Lüchinger+Meyer Bauingenieure AG in Zurich in 2019 as a project leader, where he has been designing steel, concrete, and timber structures. He joined the executive board of the company in 2023.