A rocket boost for master’s degree students
The Excellence Scholarship and Opportunity Programme offers support to the best incoming master’s degree students. Globe meets three talented individuals at various stages of their journeys and gives an insight into what the programme means for them.
The aim of the Excellence Scholarship and Opportunity Programme (ESOP) is to attract the finest master’s degree students from both within Switzerland and abroad. “ESOP recognises academic excellence and aims either to attract new students to ETH or to encourage existing ones to stay on for their master’s degree,” explains Joachim Buhmann, vice-rector for study programmes and professor of computer science at ETH Zurich. Recipients of the scholarship are expected to have excelled in their bachelor’s degree; and, more than that, they need to submit an exciting research proposal. As Buhmann explains: “Good grades on their own aren’t enough. Students need to be bold and creative in choosing the topic for their master’s degree.” That’s the combination you need if you want to go on to achieve true academic excellence, says the vice-rector.
The scholarship enables talented individuals with clear potential to complete their master’s degree free of significant financial stress, and covers study and living costs for the duration of the master’s programme. ETH also exempts scholarship holders from paying tuition fees. Last but not least, award holders benefit from a special support structure, thanks in large part to the external page ETH Zurich Foundation, which made it possible to offer such an extensive scholarship scheme in the first place. The scholarships are financed almost entirely from donations to the ETH Zurich Foundation. On top of this, the ETH Zurich Foundation regularly organises company visits for scholarship holders and invites them to events where they can meet sponsors and other scholarship holders.
From scholarship holder to professor
Marco Hutter was one of the very first students to receive an ESOP scholarship. “When I applied for the ESOP scholarship in 2007, I viewed it first and foremost as some extra financing to get me through my master’s course,” he says. Prior to that, the ETH mechanical engineering student from St Gallen’s Rhine Valley had financed his studies with jobs on the side. “Now, looking back, I value the company contacts, important people and potential research sponsors I was able to meet through the ETH Zurich Foundation,” says Hutter. His research group can only benefit from the contacts.
The former ESOP scholarship holder has recently been made assistant professor at ETH Zurich’s Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems and heads up a research group of 12 people. The group develops autonomous mobile robots designed to autonomously navigate difficult terrain, for instance in search and rescue operations or for the inspection of industrial facilities. It is important to Hutter that his research has an application-oriented aspect. His dream is that soon mobile robots will be used in various different areas. He has worked unstintingly towards this goal: “During my master’s programme, I developed a single leg, while my aim for my doctorate was to build an autonomous four-legged robot. Now we’re working on the third generation of these robotic dogs,” says Hutter as he describes his journey. It’s a succinct appraisal, but shouldn’t conceal the sophistication of the extremely varied technologies Hutter and his research colleagues have developed in the process, which are also used in various related fields. Hutter also modestly omits to mention that after his doctorate he was awarded a external page Branco Weiss Fellowship grant for postdoc research of particular relevance to society. Modesty is clearly something he believes in, and he swears by teamwork: “You can’t go it alone in this area of research. Without a good team and good teamwork it just doesn’t work.”
Fieldwork in Ecuador
Gabriela Ponce’s research is about to begin. She’s packed her cases and is all set to spend the coming weeks in Ecuador collecting water and sediment samples for her master’s thesis. The ESOP scholarship holder was born and grew up in Ecuador. After leaving school, she first headed to Hamburg for an exchange year. Even at school, Gabriela had taken a keen interest in environmental policy and social issues, and so her next step was to enroll at Jacobs University in Bremen for an undergraduate degree in environmental science and geochemistry. After that, she moved to ETH Zurich to pursue her master’s degree. She applied for an ESOP scholarship and was able to begin her master’s programme in environmental science in the autumn of 2014. “I owe it to the scholarship that I’m able to attend this great university,” Ponce says.
Her master’s thesis looks at the environmental issues surrounding mining in Ecuador. “Mining is a hot topic in Latin America,” she explains. In the area she will be visiting for her fieldwork, there used to be medium-sized gold and silver mines. The remnants are now mined by small groups using large amounts of mercury, which is damaging to the environment. And there are new plans for copper mining on a grand scale. “I want to demonstrate the environmental impact of these mining activities and examine whether environmental guidelines are being properly applied and implemented in the new mining projects,” Ponce explains. The young researcher hopes she will be able to use her knowledge to protect the environment in her country. She also believes in getting involved outside of her studies, and is currently taking part in an initiative that promotes education for children around the world.
In love with the lab
When Samuel Nobs arrived at ETH Zurich in 2010 to take up his ESOP scholarship and embark on his master’s degree, it was a long-anticipated return to his native Switzerland. The young Swiss completed part of his secondary education as well as his bachelor’s degree in New Zealand, where his family lived for a while on account of his father’s work. “It was a great opportunity to get an education in an English- speaking country,” Nobs says, “but I always knew that I would return to Switzerland at some point to continue my studies at the best possible university.” Accordingly, he coordinated his studies in New Zealand with ETH to ensure that they came as close as possible to the ETH bachelor’s programme. “That made applying for the ESOP scholarship a whole lot easier, especially when coupled with the early research experience I gained in New Zealand through work placements in laboratories,” he says.
For his master’s degree at ETH, Nobs was able to join Manfred Kopf and his research group at the Institute of Molecular Health Sciences. This is a perfect match for Nobs, as it allows him to focus exclusively on investigating the immune system – something that has always fascinated him, with its constant battle between the body’s defence forces and the threat of pathogens such as viruses and bacteria. In fact, he was still at school when he decided this is what he wanted to do. At the time, a school experiment gave him the opportunity to spend a few days in a laboratory at the University of Bern. “I remember feeling that this is what I wanted to do one day.”
Fast forward to today, and Nobs is working on his doctoral thesis. His research focuses on understanding the immune system of the lungs, in particular on elucidating factors governing the development and function of dendritic cells, which are specialized sentinel cells responsible for the activation of the adaptive immune system. Recently he and co-workers identified a gene that regulates the development of these cells specifically in the lung. “It’s basic research, of course, but one day it might allow us to support the immune system in a more targeted way than is possible with current medicines,” says the young researcher. He is clear about his future path: more basic research and a career in academia. Certainly, he says, the ESOP scholarship was an early encouragement on that path.
ESOP in numbers
The scholarship was founded in 2007 with 12 scholarship holders, and in 2015 50 master’s degree students received a scholarship. Of the 283 ESOP scholarship holders to date from 42 different countries, 86 have been from Switzerland. Around 42 percent of ESOP students are women. A good half of ESOP scholarship holders go on to complete their doctorate at ETH Zurich. Since 2012, new scholarships have been funded exclusively through donations to the external page ETH Zurich Foundation, with approximately 2,000 alumni making a contribution.