Stepping down after eight years of dedication to research
Detlef Günther will be stepping down as Vice President for Research at the end of 2022 and plans to return to his former research group for the next few years. He held his VP post for a period of eight years, during which he decisively shaped research and corporate relations at ETH Zurich.
Following two full terms of office, Detlef Günther has decided to step down as Vice President for Research on 31 December 2022 and return to his former research group, which is still active at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences (D-CHAB). With this move he will once again be dedicated full time to his own research and teaching activities. “Now is the right time to contribute to exciting developments in the field of analytical chemistry again,” says Günther. “I’d like to work together with my doctoral students to implement a few new research ideas.”
Passion for research at ETH
“Detlef has always been passionate about the university’s research and corporate relationships,” says ETH President Jo?l Mesot. “He’s been a fully committed Vice President who has made it possible to open up new areas of research, strengthen interdisciplinary research and establish new research centres. I very much regret his decision to step down at the end of the year and would like to express my gratitude for his great service on behalf of our research, our corporate relations and our knowledge transfer activities.” Mesot expressed his understanding for the move, however: “As a researcher myself, I very much understand why Detlef wishes to go back full time to his own research.”
Günther, also a football aficionado with an encyclopaedic memory, advocated particularly strongly for bolstering fundamental research. During his time in office, he pushed ETH to build and expand various platforms with excellent infrastructure and to found new centres of excellence. Examples include the ETH AI Center, which now counts over 100 of the university’s own professors as members, as well as the Tumor Profiler and the digital Trial Intervention Platform, which aim to advance medical research at the university. Over the past few years, ETH Zurich has also racked up numerous successes in European research funding. For this reason, Günther has dedicated a great deal of energy to fight the exclusion of Switzerland from the European Research Council. His advocacy work to prevent a total ban on animal experiments reflects his deep conviction that the best research can only be conducted under conditions where it can freely develop.
Successful track record
From 2015 to 2020 Günther was responsible not only for research at ETH but also for the university’s relationships with the private sector and knowledge transfer activities (see box below). “Guiding and actively promoting our spin-off activities was highly enjoyable,” he says. During his time in office, the number of companies founded at ETH grew steadily. “The Pioneer Fellow programme for promoting early-career researchers and their innovative ideas, which was established by my predecessor, has also enjoyed tremendous development,” says Günther.
Search for a successor has begun
ETH President Jo?l Mesot expressed gratitude that Detlef Günther announced his resignation with a generous notice period: this gives the university sufficient time to identify a successor, as was also the case for the partial retirement of Robert Perich. “Alongside teaching, research forms the heart of ETH Zurich,” says Mesot. “Filling this key position is critical for the development of the university and will be my top priority over the coming weeks.”
Detlef Günther: career and accomplishments
Detlef Günther is set to step down from his post as Vice President for Research at the end of December 2022. His academic career started at Martin Luther University in Halle-Wittenberg in former East Germany, where he completed training and doctoral studies in chemistry. His next steps took him to the Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry in Halle and to the Department of Earth Sciences at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada before he landed at ETH Zurich as a postdoctoral researcher in 1995. Christoph Heinrich from the Department of Earth Sciences (D-ERDW) was the one who invited him to Zurich to work on establishing a laser-based method for microanalytics at ETH.
In 1998, Günther switched to the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences (D-CHAB) as an assistant professor. He received tenure in 2003. Since 2008 Günther has been full professor of Trace Element and Micro Analysis at the Laboratory of Inorganic Chemistry (LAC). Forty-two students have completed their doctoral degree under his supervision. His research group currently includes seven doctoral candidates.
Günther’s research focuses on developing devices and methods for trace element and isotope analysis. His first research idea at ETH was a hit: while at D-ERDW he developed a device that could drill minute holes into quartz using a laser, which allowed the chemical elements of micro inclusions to be quantified for the first time ever. This laser ablation system is now used worldwide for direct solid-state analysis. Over the course of his career, Günther and his research group have published over 400 manuscripts and have received numerous awards, including the Ruzicka Prize from ETH Zurich in 2002, the European Award for Plasma Spectrochemistry in 2003 and the Simon Widmer Award in 2015.
Since 2014 Günther has been a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He is currently also a member of the scientific advisory board at the Austrian Institute of Technology and the university board at TU Darmstadt.
Before taking on the post of Vice President for Research and Corporate Relations in 2015, Günther had already held leadership positions at ETH for a number of years – as the head of the LAC for two years, for instance, and also as the head of D-CHAB from 2010-2012. He also served on the Tenure Committee and the Strategy Commission of ETH Zurich.
During his time as Vice President, Günther strongly shaped the direction of research at the university, promoted individual and interdisciplinary research, strengthened cooperation with the private sector and advanced the issue of ethics in research. He oversaw the establishment and expansion of various platforms and centres of excellence. He paid special attention to expanding medical research at ETH, for instance Personalized Health and Related Technologies (PHRT), SPHN, LOOP, the Botnar Research Center for Child Healthcare (BRCCH) and the Future Health Technology programme at the SEC in Singapore. On his watch from 2015 to 2020, 166 spin-offs were founded at ETH.
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