5.27.24
Roland Baumann
Paolo Ermanni researched novel composite materials at ETH for over a quarter of a century. His enthusiasm for materials was rivaled only by his passion for teaching. He will also go down in ETH history as the first Vice Rector for Continuing Education. To mark his retirement, we take a look back at his storied career.
Paolo Ermanni has been doing his research at ETH for over a quarter of a century. Now he is retiring. (Photograph: ETH Zurich)
“In life, one must decide whether to conjugate the verb ‘to have’ or ‘to be’,” says Paolo Ermanni, citing a quote from the pianist Franz Liszt. Ermanni says he is glad to have decided on the latter.
Technology meets the human factor
Ermanni’s statement when looking back at his career on the occasion of his retirement might come as a surprise to some, seeing as how a professorship comes with a certain level of status and a comfortable salary. However, as an internationally recognized structural technology specialist, he had more lucrative options available to him over the course of his career. Ermanni dealt with innovative composite materials – materials that are lightweight yet stable and that can take on various forms depending on their environment. These materials are in high demand in numerous fields from medicine to space travel.
It was not only materials that defined Ermanni’s career, but also the people. “Research alone wouldn’t have motivated me to take on a professorship 26 years ago,” he says. “Working with young people, teaching them how to ask the right questions and find answers to them, tackling new research questions alongside students – this was the appeal of the position.”
A love for technical objects
Ermanni ended up in his field mostly by happenstance. However, his fascination with technical objects dates back to his childhood. “I built a lot of models – of cars, airplanes, rockets – and enjoyed tinkering with my moped as a teenager,” recalls Ermanni. He was born into a family of academics in Ticino – his father was a doctor, one uncle was a civil engineer, another a chemical engineer – and the idea of attending ETH or the polytechnic university in Ticino was always a point of discussion. “As a secondary school student, I already knew I wanted to study at this unique university,” he says. Mechnical engineering would have been the obvious choice given his passion for technical systems.
Materials were not yet a topic during his time at university. He delved into mathematics and control engineering and wrote his Master’s thesis at the Institute for Biomedical Engineering. He also wanted to do his doctorate there, but then a colleague approached him about Manfred Flemming, an expert in the field of construction technologies who had been appointed to ETH by the aerospace company Dornier. “1 April 1985 was his first day of work at the university, the same day I started my doctoral studies,” says Ermanni. He began exploring composite materials and aircraft construction: “For me it all made sense. It was a childhood dream come true.”
Aircraft developer and consultant
Thanks to the support of his doctoral supervisor, Ermanni was able to join Airbus in Hamburg after receiving his doctorate in 1990. He first worked in pre-development, the preparatory stage for series and market-oriented product development. He later worked in future development and dealt with questions about how to build a second-generation civil supersonic aircraft.
At the same time, he was feeling the need to expand his horizons. “Considering the great work we were doing as engineers, I increasingly wondered why it took years for anything to be implemented,” he recalls. Ermanni wanted to understand the overarching strategic processes within large corporations and the aspects relating to production, marketing, competition and business risks. This led him to join the management consultancy firm A.T. Kearney in Milan in 1997.
Leveraging the professorship
One year later, he got a call from Zurich, prompting him to return to his alma mater in 1998. As Professor of Structural Technologies, he and his research group have developed modern material systems for adaptive structures over the last quarter of a century. “On a systems level, we can provide materials with a kind of intelligence so that they react to different operating conditions by changing their shape, for example,” he explains. “This allows us to influence aspects like aerodynamics.” According to Ermanni, these are issues that have increased in importance – for instance, when it comes to aerospace structures. His group has also successfully used structures of this kind in the field of medical technology, developing self-expanding stents.
Higher quality, less waste, longer-lived products that can be recycled at the end of their lifespan: new materials are closely connected to issues of sustainability. “I’ve always been fascinated by just how much this field of research can be leveraged,” he says.
Ermanni also enjoyed having a leveraging effect as a member of teaching staff. Over the past 26 years, he has supervised 67 dissertations, with another six still in progress. Some of these graduates have gone on to follow in his footsteps as consultants or professors.
First Vice Rector for Continuing Education
As the first Vice Rector for Continuing Education, Ermanni was responsible for the establishment of the School for Continuing Education. “Continuing education is a special way of packaging excellence in research so that people can deploy ‘ready-to-use’ knowledge and expertise for companies or social purposes,” he says.
Ermanni created a new foundation for continuing education and training at ETH. Working alongside his team and passionate ETH instructors, he grouped numerous courses together to promote dialogue and exchange between the different programmes. Course offerings also grew markedly under his tenure.
Embracing entrepreneurship
Ermanni’s professorship gave rise to several spin-offs. Some, like 9T-Labs, became independent companies, while others were acquired by existing firms. One of these spin-offs will keep Ermanni busy in retirement:
Antefil Composite Tech AG has developed a new method for producing fibre-reinforced composite materials. These materials are recyclable, and the new production method marks the first time they can be considered a cost-efficient solution. Because of their resilience, they are particularly well-suited for large components such as rotor blades on wind farms. The founders of Antefil Composite Tech AG received the ETH Zurich Spark Award in 2021 in recognition of the most innovative and economically promising invention to come out of the university that year.
“I’ve been involved in Antefil Composite Tech from the initial idea to real-world implementation, and I also hold a financial stake in the company,” says Ermanni. Starting in August, he wants to commit 100% of his time to Antefil as a member of the board of directors and as Chief Technology Officer. “We’ve raised over three million francs and are planning to move out of ETH premises into our own space in Binz this summer,” he explains. The professor-turned-entrepreneur says that the task at hand is now to implement concrete customer projects and work on scaling the company’s processes. “And then we have to face the market,” he says.
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The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich [ETH Zürich] [Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich] (CH) is a public research university in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. Founded by the Swiss Federal Government in 1854 with the stated mission to educate engineers and scientists, the school focuses exclusively on science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Like its sister institution The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne [EPFL-École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne](CH) , it is part of The Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain (ETH Domain)) , part of the The Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research [EAER][Eidgenössisches Departement für Wirtschaft, Bildung und Forschung] [Département fédéral de l’économie, de la formation et de la recherche] (CH).
The university is an attractive destination for international students thanks to low tuition fees of 809 ₣ per semester, PhD and graduate salaries that are amongst the world’s highest, and a world-class reputation in academia and industry. There are currently students from over 120 countries, many of which are pursuing doctoral degrees. In the QS World University Rankings ETH Zürich is ranked very highly in the world and very highly by the Times Higher Education World Rankings. In the QS World University Rankings by subject it is ranked very highly in the world for engineering and technology, earth & marine science.
Nobel laureates, Fields Medalists, Pritzker Prize winners, and Turing Award winners have been affiliated with the Institute, including Albert Einstein. Other notable alumni include John von Neumann and Santiago Calatrava. It is a founding member of the IDEA League and the International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU) and a member of the CESAER network.
ETH Zürich was founded on 7 February 1854 by the Swiss Confederation and began giving its first lectures on 16 October 1855 as a polytechnic institute (eidgenössische polytechnische schule) at various sites throughout the city of Zurich. It was initially composed of six faculties: architecture, civil engineering, mechanical engineering, chemistry, forestry, and an integrated department for the fields of mathematics, natural sciences, literature, and social and political sciences.
It is locally still known as Polytechnikum, or simply as Poly, derived from the original name eidgenössische polytechnische schule, which translates to “federal polytechnic school”.
ETH Zürich is a federal institute (i.e., under direct administration by the Swiss government), whereas The University of Zürich [Universität Zürich ] (CH) is a cantonal institution. The decision for a new federal university was heavily disputed at the time; the liberals pressed for a “federal university”, while the conservative forces wanted all universities to remain under cantonal control, worried that the liberals would gain more political power than they already had. In the beginning, both universities were co-located in the buildings of the University of Zürich.
From 1905 to 1908, under the presidency of Jérôme Franel, the course program of ETH Zürich was restructured to that of a real university and ETH Zürich was granted the right to award doctorates. In 1909 the first doctorates were awarded. In 1911, it was given its current name, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule. In 1924, another reorganization structured the university in 12 departments. However, it now has 16 departments.
ETH Zürich, EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne) [École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne](CH), and four associated research institutes form The Domain of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH Domain) [ETH-Bereich; Domaine des Écoles polytechniques fédérales] (CH) with the aim of collaborating on scientific projects.
Reputation and ranking
ETH Zürich is ranked among the top universities in the world. Typically, popular rankings place the institution as one of the best universities in continental Europe and ETH Zürich is consistently ranked among the top universities in Europe, and among the best universities of the world.
Historically, ETH Zürich has achieved its reputation particularly in the fields of chemistry, mathematics and physics. Nobel laureates are associated with ETH Zürich, the most recent of whom is Richard F. Heck, awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 2010. Albert Einstein is perhaps its most famous alumnus.
The QS World University Rankings placed ETH Zürich very high in the world. ETH Zürich has ranked very highly in the world in Engineering, Science and Technology, just behind The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University and The University of Cambridge (UK). ETH Zürich also ranked very highly in the world in Natural Sciences, and in Earth & Marine Sciences.
The Times Higher Education World University Rankings has ranked ETH Zürich very highly in the world in the field of Engineering & Technology, just behind
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, The California Institute of Technology, Princeton University, The University of Cambridge (UK),
Imperial College London (UK) and
The University of Oxford (UK).
In a comparison of Swiss universities by swissUP Ranking and in rankings published by CHE comparing the universities of German-speaking countries, ETH Zürich traditionally is ranked very highly in natural sciences, computer science and engineering sciences.
In the survey CHE Excellence Ranking on the quality of Western European graduate school programs in the fields of biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics, ETH Zürich was assessed as one of the institutions to have excellent programs in all the considered fields, the other two being Imperial College London (UK) and the University of Cambridge (UK), respectively.