Photo: Markus Bertschi / ETH Zurich
Vanessa Wood , the vice president for knowledge transfer and corporate relations at ETH Zurich, intends to step down at the end of the year.
She will remain with the Swiss university, returning full-time to leading her research team in the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering.
Wood has been in charge of knowledge transfer and corporate relations since 2021, when she became the first person to hold the position.
Under her leadership, ETH Zurich has significantly bolstered the entrepreneurial ecosystem through new programmes, policies and digital tools.
Working closely with the technology transfer team, as well as internal and external stakeholders, Wood put in place a new organisational structure that includes the Partnerships for Innovation, a dedicated unit to facilitate collaborations with the public and private sectors.
Wood also took charge of launching ETH Zurich | Space and the ETH School of Public Policy, pushing for more interdisciplinary research at the institution.
“In 2023, we agreed as a unit on priorities to achieve by the end of 2025. There is an incredible team in the vice presidency, who is committed to the exchange between ETH and our external partners and to supporting ETH researchers in maximizing the impact of their research.
“Now with a clear organisational structure, strategy, and seasoned leadership, I am confident that we’ll reach our goals in the coming months and the initiatives that we have started will flourish in the years to come.”
Vanessa Wood
Last month, Wood brought in Beat Weibel , the former chief IP counsel and group senior vice president of Siemens, to lead the university’s tech transfer office, ETH transfer.
Her research team, which she continued to lead throughout, uses advanced x-ray, neutron, and electron imaging, diffraction, and spectroscopy techniques combined with multiscale simulation to study the fundamental properties of materials and devices.