Mission and strategy
Research and teaching at the Department of Earth Sciences (D-ERDW) are guided by the objective of developing a deeper understanding of all aspects of our home planet.
Mission statement
We concern ourselves with the origin of the Earth and its place within the Solar System, the major physical and chemical processes driving its interior evolution, the drivers that shape the surface environment on land, and in the ocean and atmosphere, the interactions between the surface environment and life, and the management of environmental and resource issues in the modern world. The time dimension is particularly important in earth science. The perspective of earth history give us a holistic view of our planet, a view that is very much relevant to both resource exploitation and environmental management in modern human society. Institutions such as ETH Zurich have the responsibility not only to address societal issues, but also to pioneer a better understanding of the fundamental science that lies behind them.
Research and teaching at D-ERDW spans a wide range of philosophies. We investigate planetary processes at a fundamental level in pursuit of a better understanding of the basic physical, chemical and biological processes that have shaped Earth. We also seek to use this in-depth understanding to promote intelligent management of the surface environment, to foster informed use of resources, to protect people from natural hazards, and to predict and respond to future changes.
Strategy
Our vision
The Department of Earth Sciences at ETH Zurich is a global centre of excellence in the field of earth sciences. We explore our planet and its home in the Solar System as a whole, and we create new knowledge pertaining to questions relevant to humanity.
We aim to be the most attractive destination globally for emerging scientists, be they professors, postdocs, or students, and to provide state-of-the-art education and mentoring at all levels from Bachelors to Assistant Professor.
Our strategy, as one of the world‘s best research and education centres in the field of Earth Sciences, is to further expand our global leadership position by 2030 in these central research themes:
The discipline of earth sciences faces both opportunities and challenges, globally. Exciting opportunities have arisen through the dramatic expansion in the remit of the discipline over the past couple of decades, into new fields on the margins of the core disciplines of geology, petrology and geophysics – geobiology, oceanography, environmental geophysics, geothermal energy and more. The challenge is to expand into these new areas, while at the same time maintaining expertise in the core domains of earth science, important to us as researchers, to the employment prospects of our students, and to the industries and organisations who employ them.