vmitet Summaries of DK

Short, informal and unofficial summaries of D-ITET Department Conference Meetings

March 17, 2020

Summary in progress

December 9, 2020

Retirement of Martin Vogt

After 30 years at the D-ITET mechanical workshop, Martin Vogt retired in Fall 2020. He lead the Workshop and made sure that during all those years, the whole of D-ITET would get precisely machined experiment setups and parts. With his years long expertise, he always gave helpful insights in how pieces and contraptions could be improved. He recollected the great time and thanks the whole department for the support, without which he could not have sustained this institution. He wishes all the best to his successor, Silvio Scherr, and that the department supports him as well as it did him.


Election of new Department Management

Starting January 2021, Prof. Vanessa Wood was appointed to be Vice President ETH for knowledge transfer and corporate relations. She therefore stepped down as department head of the D-ITET after three years. The DK confirmed the new department management: Prof. Stephan as head of department, Prof. Dörfler as his deputy, Prof. Kozerke as Director of Studies, and Prof. Luisier as Delegate for Communication and PR. The newly elected head of department, Prof. Stephan, then thanked Prof. Wood for her tireless commitment to the whole of D-ITET in an enthusiastic speech. After all, Prof. Wood stepped in as head of department head as, at that time, the youngest tenured professor. The whole DK wished her all the best with the new tasks and thanked her with a huge applause.


Presentation of Senior Scientists

Starting with this DK two senior scientists with permanent contracts will briefly present their work during the DK. After all, they are one of the constants in the department. This time presented:

  • Prof. Stefan Moser: He is senior scientist at the signal and information processing lab (ISI) with Prof. Lapidoth and Prof. Loeliger, but also Adjunct Professor at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan, Math teacher at the Kantonsschule Uster and, until last year, the FHNW. He highlights his main two interest: teaching and information theory. He curates extensive manuscripts on information theory for classes at ETH and elsewhere. The best: its freely available on his homepage (https://moser-isi.ethz.ch/).
  • PD Dr. Martin Frimmer: He is senior scientist at the Photonics Laboratory with Prof. Novotny. He shares his passion about particle levitating with us, where he investigates the particle’s position and uses feedback to change it, a scientific field called Levitodynamics. He is heavily involved with the new Quantum Engineering Master and shares Stefan’s enthusiasm for teaching students: He heads a quantum-engineering-project-based learning environment for the students also learn project development, planning and execution in a multidisciplinary setting.

October 1, 2020

Vernehmlassung Doktoratsverordnung

Together with the D-CHAB, MATH, MTEC, and PHYS, the D-ITET formulated a common response for the revision of the Doktoratsverordnung. Especially two topics raise comments:

  • The mandatory co-supervision for each PhD student. The mentioned departments suggest to limit the compulsory number of co-supervisors to only one.
  • The qualifying colloquium after the submission of the PhD research plan. Here, the departments are concerned that one year is not sufficient to assess a PhD student's performance and having to decide ultimately on stay or leave is not possible yet.

As a last-moment concern, the technical staff spotted a potential hurdle for non-EU students if the formal hiring, and subsequently the visa request procedure, is too tightly connected to the matriculation as doctoral student. The comments will be submitted shortly to the ETH board; the current timeline aims for fall 2021 for the new Doktoratsverordnung to take effect.


New Professors at D-ITET

  • Prof. Kaveh Razavi is leading the Computer Security Group. He focuses specifically on hardware security.
  • Prof. Onur Mutlu, at ETH since 2016, joined D-ITET recently. He's interested in computer architecture, systems and bioinformatics.
  • Prof. Christoph Studer heads the new Integrated Information Processing group. His work is at the intersection of wireless communication, machine learning, digital signal processing and IC design.


Center of Project Based Learning

The new center of project based learning fills the niche for bachelor students to acquire practical and hands-on experience and credits and was founded in January 2020. Their goal is to offer a wide range of P&S courses and prepare the students for their later semester and master projects later in their studies and finally also after graduating, all along the lines of the ETH critical thinking initiative. Their first industry-sponsored flagship project, the wireless smart patches, aims to measure vital parameters, and is a collaboration between them, IBM Zurich and the CHUV. See https://pbl.ee.ethz.ch/

May 30, 2018

New orientation event for Doctoral Students

Starting next Fall, D-ITET will be organizing an orientation event for its new Doctoral Students. This event is an evolutation of the Welcome Event organized in the department since a couple of years. It becomes compulsory for all new students, and is meant to present the ETH and D-ITET culture, promotting best practices in teaching and research, the rights and duties of a Doctoral Student.
This is an initiative of the Department Head, Prof. Wood. The event will be co-organized with vmitet and AVETH.
The first Orientation Event will be on October 10th, 2018.


Annual Feedback Meeting for Doctoral Students

vmitet worked on a procedure aiming to foster exchange of feedback between Doctoral Students and their supervisor. We proposed to have, at least once per year, a personal meeting for this sole purpose. This is also the opportunity to discuss the expected graduation date of the student. We presented to the DK a form that would serve as a monitoring tool for the department.
The procedure and the latest version of the form have been approved by the DK. The D-ITET will recommend in its regulations that all professors have such meetings with all their students on a yearly basis.
Documents will be put online over the summer and presented to all new doctoral students at the Orientation Event in October. vmitet will relay the information when the procedure is officialized.


New professors at D-ITET

  • Prof. Daniel Razansky has accepted the offer for the Biomedizinische Bildgebung position. This is a shared professorship with University of Zurich.
  • Prof. Taekwang Jang has accepted the offer for the Analog and Mixed‐Signal Interfaces position. He will start on August 1st, 2018.


Research Video training

The first D-ITET "My research video" course – a pilot project in collaboration with MAZ Swiss School of Journalism – came to an end. To mark the occasion, all course participants showed the results of their work at a "film festival" on 23 April 2018.
The videos are now available online.
After this first success, the Department is thinking about offering such training on a more regular basis.



Dec. 13, 2017

Announcements

  • The recent AVETH Survey on Employment Conditions shows that the satisfaction of the Mittelbau at D-ITET is high. Approval of the co-examiners for the doctoral examination
  • The department is currently working with vmitet on Supervision Guidelines. A proposal will be presented during the next semester.
  • D-ITET would like to increase their participation in the ETH Strategy Commission
  • D-ITET is considering in offering new Certificates of Advanced Studies (CAS) (Machine Learning, Embedded Systems…) Discussions are ongoing together with the D-INFK department, who is also interested.


Election of the new Department Management

The following department Management was elected.

  • Prof. Vanessa Hood (Head)
  • Prof. Klaas Enno Stephan (Deputy Head)
  • Prof. Juerg Leuthold (Director of Studies)
  • Prof. Klaas Prüssmann (Delegate for Infrastructure)
The new team has been elected for a two years mandate, starting on Feb. 1st 2018.


Math lectures in the Bachelor

There is a systematic problem with some Math lectures in the Bachelor, which are generally perceived as too hard/theoretical by the students. D-ITET is proposing to try the following: selected students, which are willing to follow ‘tougher’ mathematics, will be able to sit in the lectures for the D-MATH students. For the rest of the D-ITET students, the plan is to find a lecturer willing to give more of a ‘math-for-engineers’ lecture.


Job description of permanent scientific staff at ETH Zurich (Summary of the collected feedback)

There are 4 different profiles proposed (Senior Scientist (SeSc) with research focus, SeSc with teaching focus, Technology Manager, and Research Manager). The first two are meant to lead to a ‘Titular Professor' position.
No job guarantee, but it is proposed to have regular meetings in case the Professor retires to discuss employability of the SeSc.
Making financial reserves to finance the SeSc is discouraged!
It is extremely important to clearly distinguish between Titular Professor and Professor positions.

Proposal

Presentation of Research Collection by Barbara Hirschmann

Quick presentation of the new platform for open access and research data repository Research Collection. The complete presentation (given at a vmitet Career Event last year) is available online.

Presentation


Oct. 4, 2017

New composition of the D-ITET Doctoral Committee (Doktoratsausschuss)

That’s an opportunity to learn about that this commission does! Its main responsibility include

  • Approval of the co-examiners for the doctoral examination
  • Approval of the research plans
  • Appointing of doctoral examination chairs
  • Approval of the credit points collection

The new committee is composed of

  • Prof. Biela (pres.)
  • Prof. Loeliger
  • Prof. Yanik
  • Prof. Novotny


Revision of D-ITET Bachelor and Master programs

After extensive discussions with both professors and students, the Department conference of D-ITET has approved the revision of its Bachelor and Master programs. One major modification concerns the semester projects

  • Semester projects are increased from 8 to 12 credit points (to better match the actual time spent by the students on the projects),
  • One project is shifted from the Master to the Bachelor. Still, two semester project must be conducted by all students during Bachelor plus Master, but only one is compulsory within the Master.

Other changes are planned, mainly aiming at a lighter workload for the students in the first semester of the Bachelor.
This new programs will start in Fall 2018.


Job description of permanent scientific staff at ETH Zurich

ETH is trying to clarify and organize what should be the different profiles of permanent scientific staff (non-professor). A proposal has been circulated to all departments for feedback until the end of the semester.

Prof. Lapidoth is responsible for the feedback collection. You are invited to contact him directly if you have comments.

Proposal

Pictures and Videos of experimental setup

Are you currently running some cool experiments? Contact Gertrud Lindner and the department communication team! They would be happy to come by and take some pictures and short videos.

Too often, there is no illustration available for news release when one gets an award for her/her research… Let’s communicate better about the nice things we do!