Dr. Helga Rietz-Pankoke

Helga Rietz is the Science Communications Manager at ETH AI Center. She has a background in physics and graduated with a PhD in attosecond physics in Heidelberg, Germany. Writing and storytelling, however, has always been a passion of hers, which she pursued first at Heidelberg's student newspaper "ruprecht", later on as an intern at various media outlets. A postgraduate degree in science journalism made writing about complex scientific findings for lay audiences her profession.  

Before joining the ETH AI Center, Helga has been a writer and editor for the science section of Neue Zürcher Zeitung, where her main beats were physics, astronomy, space exploration and engineering. Her stories have won a AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award in 2015 and the PUNKT - Preis für Technikjournalismus in 2018. Her work got shortlisted for "prix média", the journalism award of the Swiss Academy of Science, as well as for "Medienpreis Luft- und Raumfahrt" in 2017.

In 2020/21 she completed a CAS in Data Journalism at the Swiss School of Journalism MAZ, enriching her reporting with data-analytics and methods borrowed from machine learning. She was a fellow of the "Masterclass Wissenschaftsjournalismus" by Robert Bosch Foundation (class of 2014/15), and of the "Immersion to Action" Science Communication Bootcamp, supported by Gebert Rüf Stiftung and organized by Swissnex San Francisco (class of 2023). In 2023, she got elected into the board of the Swiss Association for Science Journalism (SKWJ/SASJ) and became a member of the jury for prix média. 

In her role as a Communication Manager of the ETH AI Center, she regularly appears as a speaker and panelist discussing topics around AI, including in the series "KI imDialog" organized by the Department of Economic Affairs in the Canton of Zurich. Other noteworthy appearances include a panel at Paulus Akademie Zürich, and the "Disputationen" at the Zurich Grossmünster. As an invited speaker and panelist for the Science Journalist's Association of India's inaugural conference in New Delhi (2023), she delved into chances and challenges that current AI technologies bring about for reporters and newsroom staff.