ETH Alumni 150 Jahre Jubiläum in Singapur

Dieser Text wurde nicht ins Deutsche übersetzt.

As the ETH Alumni Association celebrates its 150th anniversary, we asked ourselves how ETH Alumni were represented in Singapore before the formation of the Singapore-ETH Centre in 2010 and the ETH Alumni Chapter Singapore in 2008. According to the Straits Times newspaper archive, a civil engineer from ETH who was working before in Singapore and temporarily relocated to Switzerland was looking for a job in Singapore as early as in 1907. However, it is more likely that at least since the formation of the Swiss Club in Singapore in 1871 or even before, ETH Alumni have found their way to the Lion City.

Active Alumni chapter abroad

The ETH Alumni Chapter Singapore , being among the most active Alumni chapters abroad, was joining the 150th anniversary celebrations in a special way:
Together with the Singapore-ETH Centre, we welcomed 21 exceptional students from ETH to kick off the ETH-Singapore month in connection with multiple workshops in Science, Technology, Prototyping, Practice and Policy for 3 and a half weeks they were participating in.

Warm welcome from Zurich

With about 10 guests of the ETH Alumni Chapter Singapore and the special guest Nicholas Stürchler, Deputy Head of Mission of the Swiss Embassy, the event started with a warm welcome from Zurich by Rector Sarah Springmann who gave her greetings via video call.

Networking and Engaging

After a warm welcome from Felix Kottmann, and Dr. Aurel von Richthofen, the chapter’s President and Vice President respectively and main organizer of the ETH-Singapore month, the next part of the event started:
As the ETH Alumni Chapter Singapore provides an excellent network, we intended to appreciate this within this event and to encourage the students to engage in the Alumni association once they will be graduates:
The first Alumni speaker was Prof. Dr. Hortense Le Ferrand who just started as an assistant professor at the Nanyang Technological University. She researches new composite and ceramic materials and takes various inspirations from biology. In her keynote, she gave an overview about her research and highlighted her background at ETH, what led her to Singapore and the opportunities she finds here.
Our second speaker was Bruno Wildermuth, a name almost everyone knows in Singapore. He was listed among the most influential people to Singapore’s development, which are not Singaporean citizens. Bruno Wildermuth is the person, who convinced the Singaporean Government of a Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system, which he subsequently implemented. He personally negotiated with Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and worked until very recently as a consultant to Singapore’s public transport companies. In his keynote, he shared with the students his experience of working in Singapore and the methods he used in planning. He thus gave the attending students a very rare direct insight in what it takes to plan and implement a worldwide first class public transport system.

Many thanks to the Singapore-ETH Centre

The event was concluded by an aperitif, which gave all participants the opportunity to network, discuss the keynotes and getting to know about first-hand experience about the daily research at SEC for the students.
The ETH Alumni Chapter Singapore thanks the Singapore-ETH Centre for the continuous support as it generously sponsored the aperitif and provided the facilities for this event.