Research

One way to lighten the construction industry’s heavy carbon footprint is to reuse existing materials – an approach being explored by numerous researchers. Here’s a look at some of their ideas, ahead of an upcoming speaker event at EPFL.

Renovating buildings to improve their energy efficiency is a crucial step towards Switzerland achieving its climate targets. ETH Zurich researchers can now reveal the most effective renovation strategies for reducing greenhouse gas emissions: replace fossil-fuel heating systems and harness the potential of bio-based building materials like straw and hemp.

Researchers at ETH Zurich have succeeded in detecting heavy precipitation events directly with GPS data. The results of their study could significantly improve meteorological monitoring and forecasting.

An artificial intelligence system developed at EPFL can produce 3D maps of coral reefs from camera footage in just a few minutes. It marks a major leap forward in deep-sea exploration and conservation capabilities for organizations like the Transnational Red Sea Center (TRSC).

Air traffic is responsible for two to three percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. To meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement and make air travel climate-neutral by 2050, PSI is carrying out research into sustainable aviation fuel. This could make an important contribution to reducing the climate damage caused by aviation.

EPFL scientists have developed a sustainable method to make high-performance plastics from agricultural leftovers, turning them into valuable materials.

Can paralysed people walk again? Yes, sometimes science achieves something miraculous. But what does it take to put an obvious concept into medical practice so that patients can actually benefit from it?

Remote sensing specialist Petra D’Odorico likes to fly drones. Not as a hobby, but rather to record high-resolution multispectral and thermal images, which can be used to create an early warning system to detect drought stress in forests before it becomes apparent.

Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to revolutionise the way we make predictions. But how reliable are such predictions and modelling? What issues of trust arise? There are different approaches to analysing, translating and predicting the future with AI and the ETH Domain has recognised the potential.

The Swiss Light Source at the PSI is currently undergoing an upgrade to ensure that it remains a centre of excellent research in the future. The project manager gave us a tour of the construction site.

Wastewater-based epidemiology can provide valuable insights into a population’s overall health. By analysing samples gleaned from wastewater, Eawag is helping medical experts shed new light on the prevalence of coronavirus infections during the pandemic. But the possibilities don’t end there.

Ecological communities in rivers and lakes are responding to climate change in a similar way to communities on land. This is shown by the first comprehensive comparison of freshwater and terrestrial ecosystems around the globe, co-led by Eawag and WSL. When temperatures rise, warm-loving species are the main beneficiaries. One surprising exception may be the plankton.

EPFL researchers have shown that large language models primarily trained on English text seem to use English internally, even when they are prompted in another language. As AI increasingly runs our lives, this may have important consequences regarding linguistic and cultural bias.

EPFL researchers have developed a haptic device capable of reproducing the softness of various materials, from a marshmallow to a beating heart, overcoming a deceptively complex challenge that has previously eluded roboticists.

Researchers at ETH have managed to trap ions using static electric and magnetic fields and to perform quantum operations on them. In the future such traps could be used to realize quantum computers with far more quantum bits than have been possible up to now.