Eawag Directorate appointed

14. Dezember 2006

The Board of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology (ETH) has appointed Professors Rik Eggen, Peter Reichert and Bernhard Wehrli as members of the Directorate of Eawag for the term of office of the institute’s new Director – Professor Janet Hering. When Janet Hering takes up the directorship on 1 January 2007, Rik Eggen is to assume the role of Deputy Director. While Eggen, Reichert and Wehrli have been members of the Directorate since March 2005, they were initially appointed on a provisional basis by the ETH Board, until a new Director took up his or her post. The executive team is completed by two incumbent members, Willi Gujer and Roland Schertenleib. Ueli Bundi, who has served as Director of Eawag on an interim basis since July 2004, is to leave the Directorate at the end of 2006. He will, however, remain at the institute in the capacity of a scientific consultant.

Janet Hering (born in 1958) most recently served as Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). She has specialized in techniques for making contaminated water drinkable, and in the biogeochemical behaviour of trace metals. Hering is no newcomer to Eawag, having carried out postdoctoral research at the institute from 1988 to 1991. She studied chemistry at Cornell University and graduated with a Master’s degree from Harvard University in 1981. She earned a PhD in oceanography from MIT in 1988. At the University of California in Los Angeles, she held the post of Assistant Professor (1991) and later Associate Professor (1995). On transferring to the California Institute of Technology in 1997, she retained her ties with the University of California in the capacity of Adjunct Professor until 1999. In 2002, she was awarded a professorship at Caltech, and she became Engineering Executive Officer at Keck Laboratories in 2003. Janet Hering also sits on the editorial advisory board of Environmental Science and Technology.

Janet Hering, Director	Rik Eggen, Deputy Director	Willi Gujer
Peter Reichert	Bernhard Wehrli