The latest news from Eawag

Elena Gimmi with ETH Rector Günther Dissertori (Photo: Alessandro della Bella).
News
ETH Medal for Elena Gimmi
January 29, 2025

Elena Gimmi received an ETH Medal for her dissertation on the influence of bacterial “bodyguards” on the co-evolution of the black bean aphid and its natural enemy the parasitoid wasp.

Blue-green spaces such as the area along the River Limmat near Zurich’s city centre cool the environment and help to mitigate the effect of global warming (iStock, Michael Derrer Fuchs).
News
Making heatwaves in cities more bearable
December 12, 2024

Plants and water can mitigate heat in cities. Using Zurich as a case study, Eawag researchers tested a climate model which indicates how large the effect of green and blue spaces is. The model supports urban planning and shows where improvements would be particularly effective.

Tural Aliyev in the Cryopshere Pavilion at the COP29 in Baku, Azerbaijan (Photo: Eawag).
Institutional
Eawag at COP29: Swiss Innovations for Global Climate ...
November 15, 2024

The 29th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP29) will take place in Baku, Azerbaijan, from 11 to 22 November 2024. The Aquatic Research Institute Eawag is organising three thematic panel discussions on the topic of ‘Swiss innovations for global climate action’ together with the Institute of Environmental Sciences at the University of Geneva.

A section of the drill core from the prehistoric Lake Greifen (Photo: Yama Tomonaga, Eawag, University of Basel).
News
Nuclear waste storage needs to withstand an ice age
November 12, 2024

A nuclear waste storage facility needs to be secure, even if glaciers were to churn down from the Alps into the midlands in a distant future. This is why Nagra arranged for a study of the sediments that had been deposited in former, deep glacial lakes. The layers are around 600,000 years old, making them much older than the last ice age, which was around 24,000 years ago. Good news for Nagra: it seems that the layers of stone lying beneath have not been eroded by ice since that time.

Nathalie Dubois retrieves sediment cores from the cold storage for further analysis (photo: Alessandro della Bella).
News
Nathalie Dubois awarded ERC Synergy Grant
November 5, 2024

The European Research Council is supporting the MEMELAND research project of a European research team with over 13.5 million euros. Nathalie Dubois from Eawag is a member of the group. The aim is to provide a new narrative for European environmental history, offering decisive insights for sustainable agriculture and climate protection in Europe.