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Jan Vermant, Soft Materials, has been nominated as Outstanding Reviewer for the journal Soft Matter of the Royal Society of Chemistry. The reviewers have been chosen based on the number, timeliness and quality of the reports completed over the last 12 months.

ETH Professor Nicola Spaldin will today be honoured for her revolutionary research in the field of materials science. In Paris, she is set to receive the L'Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science award for Europe, which carries prize money of 100,000 euros.

A team of researchers from the Department of Materials led by Dr. Edmondo M. Benetti have demonstrated that when cyclic polymer ligands are grafted onto inorganic NPs, ultra-dense and highly compact brush shells are generated.

A team of researchers from the Department of Materials, coordinated by Dr. Edmondo M. Benetti and Prof. Marcy Zenobi-Wong (D-HEST), developed an injectable, synthetic formulation for the treatment of cartilage degeneration during osteoarthritis. This takes inspiration from the lubricating properties of polymer brush interfaces, which are structurally similar to synovial bio-lubricants present in the articular joint.

The ETH Board awarded the title of Professor to Dr. Claude Ederer (*1972), currently Senior Scientist and Lecturer at ETH Zurich, as Adjunct Professor at ETH Zurich. Claude Ederer is a globally recognised expert in the field of materials theory of ferroic systems. Before joining ETH Zurich in 2012, he worked at a number of renowned universities in the United States and Ireland. Congratulations!

UV- and visible light-induced switching of enzymatic activity has been demonstrated using surface-grafted polymer brushes functionalized with microperoxidase MP-11 and spiropyran mojeties. Integration into an optofluidic device allowed reversible switching of the enzymatic activity under flow.