This week, the Swiss Federal Council elected Michael Hengartner as the new President of the ETH Board, taking up office on 1 February 2020.
IMD EMBA Dean Stefan Michel said, “I congratulate Michael Hengartner on his new role at the helm of the ETH Board, the strategic management and supervisory body of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology and the four research institutes (ETH Zurich, EPFL, PSI, WSL, EMPA and Eawag). On behalf of IMD, I wish him success in leading the ETH Board to new heights.”
A graduate of IMD’s Executive MBA in 2008, Hengartner has been rector of the University of Zurich since 2014 and since 2016 president of the Swissuniversities University Association. The Canadian-Swiss dual citizen grew up in Quebec.
He received his doctorate in 1994 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge (USA) under the supervision of Nobel Prize Winner for Medicine H. Robert Horvitz. He then directed a research group at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York until 2001.
In 2001, he was appointed to the newly established Ernst Hadorn Endowed Professorship at the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Zurich. From 2009 to 2014, Hengartner was Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of the University of Zurich.
