March 2022

From now on the D-BAUG newsletter informs regularly about latest news and developments at the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering. It is available in English and German, and serves to keep all D-BAUG members as well as stakeholders at ETH Zurich and beyond up to date.

The slab avalanche modelling that Alexander Puzrin and Johan Gaume, two researchers from ETH and EPFL, used to explain the so-​called Dyatlov Pass mystery has triggered a variety of responses around the world. In a follow-​up article, the two researchers reflect on the impact of their research findings in science and the media and describe the follow up expeditions to the Dyatlov Pass that supported the slab avalanche theory.

Help to improve weather forecasting models with CAMALIOT, an infrastructure and app that uses GPS from smartphones to support scientific research. Join our crowdsourcing campaign on 17 March 2022 – any person with access to an Android cellphone is invited to download the free app and participate. CAMALIOT was commissioned by the European Space Agency and is led by Benedikt Soja, professor of space geodesy at D-BAUG at ETH Zurich.

For the first time, an international research team led by Eleonora Secchi has succeeded in precisely characterizing a remarkably resilient biofilm structure, so-called streamers. They reveal how extracellular DNA (eDNA) is essential to the mechanical stability of the streamers and under what conditions they are formed. Furthermore, by controlling eDNA, the researchers control their formation. Given the ubiquity of streamers, these findings are relevant in the environmental and medical settings.