Coming from an engineering background, my relationship with food was only limited to my plate. In 2018, jumping straight from a civil engineering bachelor’s to a master’s in rural development changed the course of my career, and ‘Food,’ in a literal sense, became the most crucial part of my life.

During my master’s in 2019, a university senior, who had recently attended summer school, introduced me to the World Food System Center. His stories of ‘jumping on fabacean beans in a remote village of Switzerland’ would make me curious about the kind of adventure a summer school could provide. As the most obvious move, I, too, applied for the World Food System Summer School in 2020 but couldn’t join due to COVID-related disruptions.

Finally, in August this year, I landed in the serene village of Rheinau to attend the 10th World Food System Summer School. I was one among a cohort of 25 amazing people from 19 different nationalities, and 17 different academic discipinary backgrounds, brimming with passion and love for food. We hopped onto the trademark old truck to begin our Summer School Journey to understanding food systems in transition!

by Petra Schneider, International Relations Officer Asia, 18 March 2021

Since beginning of this year, I have a new job at the Office of the President. My designated work place is Singapore, a beautiful city I had only visited twice in my life, each visit only lasting a couple of days. Over Christmas, I watched the third season of the “Westworld” series which was almost entirely shot in Singapore. In the “Making of” featurette, the movie producers stated that they searched for filming locations that looked like “the city of the future” and came to the unanimous conclusion that Singapore is it. Singapore is not only a city with many high-rise buildings, but it brings together nature and city developments in a unique way (for example the FCL Global Program at the Singapore ETH Centre SEC).

So, in January I applied for entry to Singapore. A week later my request was granted and a packing frenzy began. It is always hard for me to pack for a different season than I am currently in. With the record snow in Zurich at the end of January, it was really trying to imagine a life with daytime temperatures at a constant 31°C (and in the context of work, not on a beach). The first two weeks I would be quarantined in a “surprise” hotel room that I would not be allowed to leave. I searched the internet and talked to a couple of colleagues about what to expect, and what others recommended. Since I am a real coffee junkie, and everything is better with a nice cup of hot steaming coffee, I stuffed my Nespresso coffee maker (with plug adapter) including packs of coffee capsules in one bag… along with my Swiss army knife. (Would it be okay to also pack a few bottles of Merlot from Ticino? I decided “no”). Now I was all set and ready to go!

Departure from Zurich

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I had not travelled overseas. I had heard of some mixed experiences from a colleague who voyaged to the US in autumn with fellow travelers in full-on disposable jumpsuits, so I was not sure what to expect on my SWISS flight to Singapore. At Zurich Airport, there were even fewer travelers around compared to September when I visited my mom in Berlin for her birthday. The E Gate which usually facilitates intercontinental flights at ZRH was closed. My flight departed from Gate D. Only 14 Passengers showed up, and we all got on a bus to our freezing cold plane (morning temperatures that day were below -10°C). The crew on the plane was super nice and relaxed. This felt very pleasant and comforting.

Arriving in Singapore

My plane touched down in Singapore at 5.20 a.m. local time. Disembarking was a breeze, with people in protective wear greeting us in a friendly manner and showing us the way. To my surprise, the immigration process went very smoothly. I got to pick up all of my luggage and proceeded to the arrival COVID test, which was located in a tent (tennis court size) with loud disco music playing, and the people administering the COVID test almost seemed to have a good time. This made me feel at ease. At the Exit we were directed to a bus which would bring us to our designated SHN (SHN = Stay Home Notice) hotel. Even my luggage was carried to the bus for me (and unloaded at the hotel), which was a really nice gesture.

The quarantine in hotels is mandatory even for Singapore residents. Besides better compliance with the rules of the quarantine, the hotels are kept in business. My fellow passengers and I got lucky and were assigned the Swissotel, where all the rooms have small balconies which we are permitted to use while wearing a mask, and many rooms have a view (mine with a full frontal Marina Bay view). One should always focus on the positive.

Day 5

At the hotel, we are provided with food three times a day – local cuisine, mostly Indian, Chinese or Thai, all of which I love. Everything is prepared fresh and always tasty. Though I am not a health nut, after three days I was really craving something fresh. So, I decided to order some groceries online: fruits, vegetables, milk and cereal. Merely half an hour later everything was delivered to my room, including a Swiss style müesli brand name “Alpen”. Tasty!

For exercise I brought a foldable yoga mat and exercise bands. With ASVZ@home, I try to work out. But with the very limited space not all programs really “fit” space-wise, and also my coordination skills are not what I hoped they would be. Today I tried to go for a walk, which I had adopted as a routine back home in Zurich (but not in my apartment). I felt really silly walking back and forth in my hotel room, with the Aircon “on”, for crying out loud (maybe I do Monty Python style silly walks tomorrow). Not entirely sure how things will look in the remaining nine days to go. I will get back to you on that. Or maybe not. Asia is calling.

About the author

Petra Schneider studied Chemistry at the TU Berlin, worked for Roche Pharmaceuticals, and founded two start-up companies. In 2010 she became a member of the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at ETH Zurich. This year she joined the Office of the President at ETH to foster institutional relations with Asia. She has recently moved to Singapore.

by Carlo Sferrazza, PhD candidate at the Institute for Dynamics and Control, 24 December 2020

In November, TEDxZurich featured the talk of ETH researcher Carlo Sferrazza introducing a novel sensing technology that targets the next generation of soft robotic skins.

Since the start of my PhD, I have often been asked about my research topic by my friends and family. These were only some of the instances when I have been confronted with the task of explaining the relevance of my research to people outside the field of robotics. While the potential of enabling robots with a soft skin that could give them a sense of touch is certainly fascinating to most of us, people still wonder why this is worth looking into, what it could be used for, and whether this is going to be dangerous. These are some of the questions that I try to address when giving public talks, and TEDxZurich was a fantastic opportunity to reach people across the globe.

I have always been keen to present my research to different types of audiences. I’ve been involved in presentations and demonstrations to researchers, engineers, politicians, artists, children and non-professionals. At the end of last year, I gave a short talk at the 2019 WORLD.MINDS Annual Symposium about the vision of my PhD research. When TEDxZurich approached me, it was the chance to bring on stage both the narrative part of my research, as well as a prototype of the concept I have been working on.

During my PhD at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, I designed and fabricated a soft tactile sensor that allows robots to retrieve rich contact feedback from their interaction with the environment. While modern cameras provide machines with a very well-developed sense of vision, robots still lack such a comprehensive solution for their sense of touch. In the talk, I presented examples of why this technology has the potential to revolutionize robotic manipulation, human-robot interaction, and prosthetics. Around halfway through the talk, I also demonstrated the sensing concept we developed. The way the sensor works is by using an internal camera to track markers placed within a deformable skin. I showed the views from the internal camera, and how the sensor can use the pictures from the camera to estimate in real-time the distribution of the forces applied to its soft surface, when interacting with my hand or with an arbitrary object.

Obviously, when I started preparing my talk, little did we know that it would be impossible to organize large events in person. Nevertheless, as the event was pre-recorded and live-streamed, the virtual talk could reach a much larger audience than usual. I believe that in the future such events should be held more often in a hybrid format, with in-person events streamed online to let more people all over the world take part in them.

Having always enjoyed watching public talks outside of my area of expertise, I hope that my talk at TEDxZurich has conveyed to the general public the significance of my research, with the hope of also inspiring young people and future researchers. If you were not able to watch the livestream, stay tuned for the talk ‘Robots that feel by seeing’ to be posted on YouTube in early 2021.

About the author

Carmelo (Carlo) Sferrazza is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, under the supervision of Professor Raffaello D’Andrea. His current research interests include the design and development of vision-based, data-driven tactile sensors, and learning-based model predictive control. He was a recipient of the Best Paper Award at the 2020 IEEE International Conference on Soft Robotics, and he received the ETEL Award for his master’s thesis on model predictive control of an unmanned aerial vehicle.