At the request of ETH-Zurich President Ralph Eichler, the ETH Board has appointed Roland Siegwart as the new Vice President Research and Corporate Relations at ETH Zurich. Professor Siegwart (1959*) is a Swiss national and internationally renowned pioneer of robotics research. He is to assume his new position as of January 1, 2010 and succeeds Professor Peter Chen.

Well-known researcher

Roland Siegwart has been a Full Professor of Autonomous Systems at ETH Zurich since July 2006, where he originally studied mechanical engineering and completed a doctorate in 1989. Following a year as a post-doc at Stanford University, from 1991 to 1996 he worked part time as Head of Development at the company Mecos Traxler AG and as a senior scientist at the Institute of Robotics at ETH Zurich. In 1996, he joined ETH Lausanne (EPFL) as a Professor of Autonomous Microsystems, where he went on to become a Member of the Board of the Faculty of Engineering (2002 to 2006) and founding chairman of the EPFL Space Center.

In 2005, he took up a research sabbatical at the NASA Ames Research Center and the University of Stanford. Roland Siegwart has represented Swiss engineering in numerous prestigious national and international research funding organizations. He is currently a member of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) research council and an officer of the International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR).

Company founder

With his research, Roland Siegwart has laid important scientific foundations for the development of autonomous mobile robots. Numerous prizes for innovation, patents and his involvement in the foundation of five spin-offs in the field of autonomous robots and navigation systems reflect Siegwart’s dedication to science, technology and knowledge transfer. Siegwart especially cultivates the intensive exchange of ideas with highly innovative small and medium-sized businesses in Switzerland. “We are delighted about the appointment of Roland Siegwart. He is impressive – both as a researcher and a personality with a special sense for the innovative potential of small and medium-sized businesses”, explains ETH Zurich President Ralph Eichler.

Committed lecturer

As a student delegate at the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, Siegwart has developed new teaching approaches for engineering. In conjunction with Professor Lino Guzzella, Roland Siegwart continued the so called „focus projects“ Professor Markus Meier had initiated, which soon attracted interest from the students and which in recent years have contributed towards encouraging an increasing number of young people to start studying engineering sciences at ETH Zurich. In 2008, Roland Siegwart received the “Golden Tricycle”, a prize awarded annually to family-friendly and exemplary superiors at ETH Zurich.

“Engineers choose their degree because they want to create products and systems”, says the newly elected Head of Research at ETH Zurich. Consequently, over the last few years the engineering focus projects have yielded numerous visionary and creative products that were designed and developed by the students in ETH Zurich’s workshops and ultimately showcased to an enthusiastic public. These included the racing car “Pegasus” with a hybrid engine, the helicopter-like flying film reel “Reely”, the autonomous sailboat “Avalon”, and the robotic fish “Naro”.

“Industry is dependent on our knowhow.”

What are the new ETH Head of Research’s aims as he assumes office? “One strength of ETH Zurich is the breadth of its research and knowledge“, says Roland Siegwart. “I believe we should make better use of this by facing the major challenges of society even more intensively in the future with interdisciplinary projects. Moreover, industry is dependent on our knowhow.”

According to the new Vice-President, the challenges are known: a sustainable energy supply, climate change or an increasingly ageing society, for instance. “ETH Zurich has the capacity and knowledge to provide answers and solutions to the pressing questions of our time”. The new Vice-President of Research would also like to make ETH Zurich more accessible to smaller industrial companies. “There‘s still a lot of potential for exciting and profitable results in the exchange of knowledge with small and medium-sized companies.”

Vice President Research and Corporate Relations

Roland Siegwart heads the Executive Board division Research and Corporate Relations. In this function, he is responsible for the implementation of the research results (technology transfer) and the collaboration with the economy. He approves research contracts which the units of ETH Zurich (e.g. departments, institutes, laboratories and professorships) conclude with third parties, and represents the Executive Board on research policy committees. He is in charge of the branches Scientific Coordination, Euresearch Zurich, the technology transfer center ETH transfer, the First Lab, the Functional Genomics Center and the Electron Microscopy ETH Zurich (EMEZ).