D-INFK news channel

On 4 and 5 April, the cyber competition Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge 2024 took place. Four teams from ETH Zurich participated in the challenge and one of them, team CyBerg, won first place. Big congratulations!

Every year, a cash prize is awarded from the Fritz Kutter Fund to honour valuable practice-oriented computer science theses. The fund is administered by ETH Zurich, but the prize can be awarded to any graduate of a Swiss university.

For his fundamental contributions to cryptography and information security, Professor Ueli Maurer from the Institute of Theoretical Computer Science has been appointed Full Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW). Congratulations!

The three D-INFK graduates Lukas Wolf, Dustin Klebe and Chris Aeberli, are the visionary minds behind "Sonia", a mental health app that provides mental health support to students. 

Three young computer scientists, including D-INFK alumnus Julian Schilliger, have achieved what researchers have been trying to do for 270 years: Using artificial intelligence, they have extracted text fragments from fragile papyri. This has been generously rewarded.

Over the final weekend of January, two teams representing ETH Zurich took part in the ICPC Southwestern Europe Regional Contest (SWERC) held in Paris. Team dETHroners seized the SWERC title, clinching the gold medal with an impressive 11 problems solved. Congratulations!

Professor Andreas Krause from the Department of Computer Science has been named ACM Fellow for his contributions to learning-based decision making under uncertainty. Big congratulations!

Students of the department have voted for their favourite lecturers and teaching assistants. VIS President Emilia Pucher announced the winners at the last Department Conference.

Professor Ana Klimovic has been chosen for a VMware Early Career Faculty Award which identifies recently-​appointed faculty whose research interests and accomplishments seem poised to have significant impact within the industry and academia. Congratulations!

Studying Data Science at ETH Zurich means being part of one of the most exciting driving forces of today’s Information Age. To gain deeper insights into the field, we have talked to various students, professors, and an alumna. In these video conversations, the interviewees elaborate on the growing need and importance of data science – both now and in the future.

For his thesis “A Programming Language Approach to Smart Contract Privacy”, former doctoral student Dr Samuel Steffen received the prestigious ACM SIGSAC Doctoral Dissertation Runner-Up Award. Congratulations!

The new CAS ETH AIS helps managers with non-computer science backgrounds advance their careers by providing technical fundamentals in machine learning, AI and software development.

Professor Emo Welzl has been awarded the Golden Owl 2023, a distinction that honours lecturers for excellent teaching. Congratulations!

Five D-​INFK doctoral graduates have received ETH Medals for their outstanding dissertations. Congratulations, Benjamin Bichsel, Julia Chatain, Joshua Schneider, Tommaso d’Orsi, and Amir-Hossein Karimi!

The United Nations has launched a global AI Advisory Body to work on risks, opportunities and international governance of the technology. Professor Andreas Krause, head of the Learning & Adaptive Systems Group and Chair of the ETH AI Center, is amongst the appointed experts. Congratulations!

Eight students from the Department of Computer Science have been awarded an Excellence Scholarship & Opportunity Programme (ESOP) scholarship. The scholarship allows them to develop to their full potential and to focus on their studies and research. Congratulations!

Together with the Handelszeitung, PME and Digitalswitzerland, BILANZ has selected the 100 most important minds for the digitisation of Switzerland. Among them are several current and former D-INFK members and spin-offs.

Professor Rasmus Kyng and Senior Assistant Maximilian Probst have received the inaugural Frontiers of Science Award for a paper they co-authored in 2022. Congratulations!

The indoor drone company Tinamu Labs, a spin-off from the Department of Computer Science, has secured fresh capital in a pre-series A financing round of CHF 1 million to speed up growth and development.

Professor Gustavo Alonso has received the prestigious EuroSys Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding technical contributions to the field of computer systems. Congratulations!

For his outstanding achievements as a researcher, Professor Marc Pollefeys has been elected a member of Academia Europaea. Congratulations!

Professor Bernhard Schölkopf from the Institute for Machine Learning is recognised with the 2022 ACM - AAAI Allen Newell Award for his widely used research in machine learning. Congratulations!

David Cock, senior researcher in ETH Zurich’s System’s Group, is one of the co-recipients of the prestigious ACM Software System Award. Congratulations!

Every year on the fourth Thursday of April, International Girls in ICT Day is celebrated to raise awareness about the need for greater representation of women in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector.

Team nETHics, composed of ETH students and trained by the student organisation ETH Cyber Group, placed second at this year's Geneva Cyber 9/12 Strategy Challenge. Congratulations!

Professor Torsten Hoefler, Head of the Institute for High Performance Computing Systems, is the inaugural recipient of the Jack Dongarra Early Career Award. Big congratulations!

ETH Professor Martin Vechev and his team won first place in phase 3: red teaming in global AI Privacy Prize Challenge. The competition inspired innovators on both sides of the Atlantic to build solutions that enable collaborative development of artificial intelligence (AI) models, while keeping sensitive information private.

Professors Adrian Perrig and Olga Sorkine-Hornung have been elected members of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW). They both were elected for their considerable track record in technical sciences. Congratulations!

Given the sharp rise in security attacks on systems, networks and programs, cyber security has become a crucial topic. In response to this phenomenon, the joint-degree Master’s programme in Cyber Security was established in 2019 by ETH Zurich and EPFL. We spoke with both professors and students who have first-hand knowhow of the programme, gaining insights into their experiences and perspectives.

Torsten Hoefler, Marc Pollefeys and Zhendong Su, professors at the Department of Computer Science, have been named ACM Fellows. The distinction recognises the extensive research contributions in their respective fields. Congratulations!

Professor Kenny Paterson, doctoral student Matteo Scarlata and Master’s student Kien Tuong Truong (meanwhile also a doctoral student) of the Applied Cryptography Group conducted a security analysis of the Threema messenger application and found vulnerabilities.

Srdjan Capkun and Zhendong Su, professors at the Department of Computer Science, have been named IEEE Fellows. The prestigious grade of IEEE Fellow is conferred upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest.

After winning the Golden Owl in 2020, Dr. Ghislain Fourny receives the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching at this year's ETH day on 19 November. Congratulations!

For his excellent teaching, Prof. Kenny Paterson, head of the Applied Cryptography Group at the Department of Computer Science, receives the Golden Owl 2022. Congratulations!

For his exceptional work, Marcin Copik, doctoral student at the Scalable Parallel Computing Laboratory, has been awarded an ACM-IEEE CS George Michael Memorial HPC Fellowship. Congratulations!

The ETH Global Lecture "The Wild, Unexpected, Exponential Ride Through Computer Graphics" by Ed Catmull (Pixar / Walt Disney Animation Studios) will take place on November 2. 

Professor Zhendong Su and his doctoral student Shaohua Li have been awarded a 2022 Meta Security Research Award for their project proposal on “Solidifying sanitizer implementations via automated testing”. Congratulations!

Together with colleagues from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Professor Theodoros Rekatsinas has been awarded a four-year programme from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) for the joint project “LAKE”. Congratulations!

Manuela Fischer, postdoctoral researcher and lecturer at the Department of Computer Science, was awarded the prestigious Chorafas Prize for the best doctoral thesis at ETH Zurich. Congratulations!

Four Master's graduates from the Department of Computer Science have won prizes for their outstanding performance. Three have received the ETH Medal and one the Willi Studer Prize. Congratulations!

Clara Meister, doctoral student at Rycolab at the Department of Computer Science, was awarded the prestigious Google PhD Fellowship. The Fellowship programme was created to recognise outstanding students doing innovative research in areas relevant to computer science.

Dr. Maciej Besta, who is a member of the Scalable Parallel Computing Lab at the Department of Computer Science, has won the 2022 SIGHPC Doctoral Dissertation Award. Congratulations!

The Max Planck Society honours Alexis Block, a former doctoral student at the Max Planck ETH Center for Learning Systems, with the prestigious Otto Hahn Medal for her fundamental and innovative research in the field of human-robot interaction.

Professor Zhendong Su is awarded the prestigious ICSE Most Influential Paper Award for the paper "On the Naturalness of Software". The paper emerged from a collaboration with former students and colleagues at UC Davis.

Professor Julia Vogt from the Institute for Machine Learning and Professor Ce Zhang from the Institute for Computing Platforms receive ERC Starting Grants for their respective research projects. Researchers whose projects are selected in the ERC’s highly competitive procedure receive not only international recognition, but also substantial funding for their project.

Adrian Perrig and Torsten Hoefler, professors at the Department of Computer Science, have been named IEEE Fellows. The prestigious grade of IEEE Fellow is conferred upon a person with an outstanding record of accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest.

In the last part of this video series, Niklaus Wirth tells us what doors the Turing Award opened for him and how he got one step closer to perfection with each programming language.

In this continuing conversation, Niklaus Wirth talks about the hurdles he had to overcome when introducing computer science to Switzerland and why the label "made in the USA" was absolutely necessary at the time.

1970, Prof. em. Niklaus Wirth developed the programming language Pascal and became world famous with it. In this conversation with Prof. em. Friedemann Mattern, Wirth talks about the beginnings of computer science and how he influenced them significantly.

Manuela Fischer, Maciej Besta and Francesco Locatello, three doctoral students from the Department of Computer Science, have won the ETH Medal for their outstanding doctoral theses.

Carl August Zehnder's work not only shaped the Department of Computer Science, but also the Swiss state and society. In this continuing conversation, the founder of D-INFK explains the benefits of associations, how not to lose touch in a fast-moving field and why openness is of great importance for computer scientists.

Marcin Copik, doctoral student at the Scalable Parallel Computing Laboratory at the Department of Computer Science, was awarded the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship. The program aims to empower the next generation of exceptional computing research talent. 

Four students of the Department of Computer Science were awarded with an Excellence Scholarship & Opportunity Programme (ESOP) scholarship. The scholarship allows them to develop to their full potential and to focus entirely on their studies and research. Congratulations!

In the latest Times Higher Education subject ranking for "Computer Sciences,” ETH Zurich ranks fourth and thus maintains its strong position from the previous year.

Professor emeritus Carl August Zehnder is one of the founders of the Department of Computer Science. In this video, he talks about how his research field developed out of practical necessity, the competitive pressure against other departments, and the importance of infrastructure at ETH Zurich.

Professor Ana Klimovic from the Systems Group was granted the prestigious Facebook Research Award. The award aims to support innovative solutions to the challenges that still remain in the data management community.

Professor Peter Müller, head of the Programming Methodology Group, received the prestigious Amazon Research Award for his valuable contributions in the field of automated reasoning.

Meet Albert Einstein at the upcoming Scientifica on September 4 and 5, brought back to life by Prof. Markus Gross, the Game Technology Center and D-INFK spin-off Animatico.

Professor emeritus Walter Gander was a strong advocate for computer science since the 80s. He was committed to independent computer science teaching in Swiss schools, supported women in CS and participated in development projects abroad. In the second part of this interview, Walter Gander tells us about his work as head of department, his long-term book projects and how copy & paste was done in the 80s.

Ambizione research fellow Anwar Hithnawi was granted the Facebook Research Award. The goal of this prestigious award is to invest in academic research in the field of privacy technology.

Prof. em. Walter Gander helped Switzerland acquire a high-performance computer, promoted the implementation of e-mail at ETH Zurich, and wrote the first book using LaTeX. In this interview with Lukas Fässler, high above the rooftops of Zurich, he talks about the beginnings of the Department of Computer Science and about a career that stretched from St. Gallen to Hong Kong.

The Center for Augmented Computational Design in Architecture, Engineering and Construction, commonly referred to as Design++, opens its doors on May 27. D-INFK professors Stelian Coros, Marc Pollefeys, and Siyu Tang will contribute to the keynote presentations.

In 1981, ETH Zurich launched its new computer science degree programme and 110 students started their first semester. 40 years later, the Department of Computer Science is the academic home of over 2500 students and enjoys growing interest worldwide.

For 31 years, Thomas Wick has worked at ETH Zurich in the Facility Management Department. At the beginning of this year, Mr. Wick has retired. In this farewell interview, he shares his experiences and memories.

D-INFK Professor Olga Sorkine-Hornung has been named an ACM Fellow for her contributions to digital geometry processing, computer animation, computer graphics and visual computing.

Computer science student Johan Stettler got elected as the new president of VIS, the official association of computer science students at ETH Zurich. In his new role, he is responsible for representing, coordinating and supporting VIS, its board, its committees and its members in all their various fields and tasks

David Basin, professor at the Department of Computer Science, has been named an IEEE Fellow for his contributions to formal methods for information security.

Michael Rabinovich and Dimitar K. Dimitrov, two doctoral students from the Department of Computer Science, have won the ETH Medal for their outstanding doctoral theses.

Lecturer and senior scientist Ghislain Fourny was awarded the Golden Owl 2020, a distinction that honours lecturers for excellent teaching.

The International Open Benchmark Council committee has recognized Professor Torsten Hoefler with the BenchCouncil Rising Star Award for his valuable work in the field of benchmark testing, metrics and optimization.

For the paper “The Multikernel: A New OS Architecture for Scalable Multicore Systems”, Professor Timothy Roscoe from the Systems Group at the Department of Computer Science was awarded the prestigious SIGOPS Hall of Fame Award.

A team from the Centre for Computer Science Education (ABZ) under the direction of Professor Juraj Hromkovic has received the prestigious Worddidac Award for the teaching material "Einfach Informatik 5/6" ("Simply Computer Science 5/6"). The book promotes computer science skills and creative thinking.

At the Digital Days of digitalswitzerland, the first NextGen Heroes were honoured with the Digital Economy Award. David Yenicelik, Master's student at the Department of Computer Science, is one of the two prize winners.

Dr. Zuzana Trubini and Dr. Martin Hirt receive the prestigious TCC Test-of-Time Award for their 2008 paper titled "Perfectly-Secure MPC with Linear Communication Complexity".

Four Master's graduates from the Department of Computer Science have won prizes for their outstanding Master's theses and grades: three ETH Medals and one Willi Studer Prize. Many congratulations!

The International Conference on Machine Learning award committee has recognized Prof. Andreas Krause and his collaborators with a Test of Time Award for the paper "Gaussian Process Optimization in the Bandit Setting: No Regret and Experimental Design". 

Professors David Basin and Joachim Buhmann as well as former doctoral student Mario Frank have received the Symposium on Access Control Models and Technologies (SACMAT) Test of Time Award.

ETH Zurich is one of four selected universities around the world to establish adaptive compute research clusters with teams from Xilinx, a company that develops highly flexible and adaptive processing platforms to enable rapid innovation across a variety of technologies.