Alumni News

On April 15-​16, 2023, the ETH Alumni Chapter Shanghai met in Changshu, Jiangsu province, for a two-​day gathering.

After a longer break due to Covid, alumnae and alumni from ETH and UZH met for a badminton evening at Jing’an Gymnasium in the heart of Shanghai on a late summer evening. The doubles game was friendly and fun, followed by a chill glass of cocktail in a bar nearby.

A group of 20 ETH alumnae and alumni including their family and friends had a nice autumn gathering in Shanghai on a sunny weekend. A delicious Raclette brunch was combined with a healthy biking tour to the historical Osmanthus Garden.

With last year’s memories still fresh in mind, on June 4th, 2021, Swissnex in China officially representing all Swiss Public Universities in China, hosted the annual grand Swiss Alumni China soirée on the largest Merrystar Cruise Ship along Shanghai’s iconic Bund waterfront.  

From 17 to 18 April 2021, Chapter Shanghai Alumni organised a Spring Outing to Suzhou together with EPFL Alumni and SORSA. More than 30 alumni enjoyed the spring breeze while strengthening contacts and friendships.

A group of 12 ETH alumni together with their friends and other Swiss alumni visited the Carl Zeiss China Headquarter in Shanghai on a guided tour. The participants had a great time catching up and networking with each other inspired by Zeiss products, technology, and innovation.

On 16 October 2020, swissnex China, hosted the biggest Swiss Alumni China Soirée, graced by the presence of H.E. Ambassador Bernardino Regazzoni. Every year, swissnex China holds the Swiss Alumni China gathering in Shanghai for a network of over 3,000 Alumni from Swiss Public Universities. It is the annual biggest Swiss University Alumni event in China.

On 12 July 2020, ETH Alumni Chapter Shanghai hold a very interesting webinar together with Chinese Science Club in Zurich. Both of the two speakers graduated from ETH Zurich. The following report focuses on the speakers' topics and illustrates what the attending alumni learned about their research.

ETH Alumni Chapter Shanghai organised together with Swissnex an alumni event on 15th November, 2019. Our Speaker, Dr Li yonghua, a former visiting scholar at ETH, analysed the causes of energy consumption and ways to reduce it in China.

It was a great pleasure to host Bertran Sennwald at swissnex China on September 27, 2019. Bertran gave an insightful talk about past trends, present discussions and future directions in the architecture field, as well as his 15 years of living in China.

On June 20, 2019, Prof. Mario Andrea Marchisio, a synthetic biologist held a very insightful talk on engineering microbes as living sensors at the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai.

Basile biked from Paris to Hong Kong. His exploit took him 16 months and 4 days. His stories and pictures raptured the ETH Alumni Chapter in Shanghai.

The first Fireside Chat with Mr. Kurt Haerri, who gave an insightful talk of his longterm experience at Schindler and life in China in general, was hosted at swissnex China on July 11. In an interactive format, our distinguished speaker discussed the cross-cultural Sino-West professional environment and explores the dimensions and dynamics of Chinese companies.

On June 26, swissnex China invited the world-renowned roboticist and futurist, Dr. Rolf Pfeifer, to share his profound insights in the field of artificial intelligence, robotics and automation. Dr. Pfeifer is currently Visiting Chair Professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, and he is a scientific consultant for “Living with Robots” Ltd. Moreover, he is co-founder of the National Robotics Center in Switzerland.

On March 11th, Dieter Voegtli, President of the Buhler Group Asia Pacific, held a lecture "Ganz oder gar nicht" for Swiss alumni and distinguished guests, organized by the alumni chapters of the two prestigious Swiss universities ETH and EPFL. With the audience, Dieter Voegtli shared his understanding of the Chinese market, how to create as a Swiss business in China and gave the alumni bits and pieces of his experience living in China.

In February the ETH Alumni Chapter Shanghai had two events where they experienced the use of technology in every day live. The 8^th of February they spend at «Hacker- or Makerspace» and gained insight in interesting projects. 11 days later they met again to see how technology can change everyone’s daily fitness program.