Facilities outside the departments
Teaching and research facilities outside the academic departments are institutions which provide interdepartmental services for education and research and/or conduct educational or research activities. They may be run by ETH Zurich alone or in collaboration with other universities and are set up for an indefinite period of time.
ETH Zurich runs the following facilities:
The Nanotechnology Center, which ETH Zurich is running in a unique partnership with IBM Research – Zurich, offers an outstanding research infrastructure for academics and industry specialists. It includes a clean room and six “noise-free labs” for carrying out highly sensitive trials on the nanoscale.
The interdisciplinary research centre was established in 2022 and is focused on answering questions such as: How did life on Earth begin? How did it develop and proliferate? Is there life on other planets? To answer these fundamental scientific questions, COPL facilitates the building of bridges between disciplines. Members of the Centre are more than 40 research groups from five different departments at ETH Zurich including biologists, chemists, Earth scientists, physicists, and environmental systems scientists. Together they focus on the chemical and physical processes that made the formation of living organisms possible, as well as on planets and the environmental conditions hospitable to support life.
The Collegium Helveticum was established by ETH Zurich in 1997 as a forum for dialogue between the sciences. Its aim is to promote mutual understanding between natural and engineering sciences and humanities and social sciences. The Collegium Helveticum is run jointly with the University of Zurich and the Zurich University of the Arts.
The Congressi Stefano Franscini (CSF) is ETH Zurich’s international conference platform, situated on Monte Verità above Ascona. The CSF is responsible for the promotion, selection and financing of international conferences, workshops, ETH doctoral schools on Monte Verità. The CSF provides an ideal meeting point for all members of the international scientific community who wish to discuss the state of the art and new challenges of any field of research.
The ETH Institute for Theoretical Studies (ETH-ITS) is an interdisciplinary centre for theoretical sciences, and focuses on mathematics, theoretical physics, theoretical computer science and related fields. It hosts visiting scholars (senior fellows) and postdocs (junior fellows) for up to one year.
The centralised laboratory animal facility offers access to laboratory areas equipped with modern methods of analysis, which all research groups can use for characterising the in vivo models. The ETH Phenomics Center complies with the latest international standards in species-appropriate breeding, welfare and treatment of mice used for experimental research. Handling laboratory animals in a competent, respectful and responsible way is an integral part of the biomedical research and education carried out at ETH Zurich.
Since 2002, the joint Language Center for the two higher education institutions in Zurich has offered a broad range of language courses, demonstrating that the University of Zurich and ETH Zurich recognise the growing importance of language skills in studies and research, as well as in academic and other professional fields. The Language Centre is a joint institution with the University of Zurich.
ETH Zurich is a leader in the continuing education of specialists and managers with academic backgrounds under the umbrella of the school of continuing education. Its range of continuing education programmes extends from MAS, DAS, CAS to short courses and focuses on technology, life sciences and engineering as well as the humanities, social and political sciences.
The Singapore-ETH Centre for Global Environmental Sustainability (SEC) in Singapore was established in 2010 as a collaboration between ETH Zurich and the National Research Foundation of Singapore. The SEC aims to strengthen the capacity of Singapore and Switzerland to research, understand and actively respond to the challenges of global environmental sustainability.
On behalf of the federal government, ETH Zurich operates the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) in Lugano, where the ultra-modern supercomputing infrastructure is constantly being expanded. The supercomputing systems are available to all Swiss universities and research institutions and also provide computing services for industry.