The latest news from Eawag

Since 1992, the United Nations has designated 22 March as World Water Day. In 2026, the theme will be "Water and Gender". What does water have to do with gender equality? And why does access to water determine education, dignity and power? We discuss this with Jessica MacArthur, knowledge broker in Eawag's Research Department for Sanitation and Water for Development (Sandec).

Can urban drainage system serve as a proxy for disease surveillance? Eawag and partners in Uganda explore a new approach to public health surveillance.

The Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology (Eawag) has been newly commissioned by the Federal Office of Public Health as the National Reference Centre for Wastewater Monitoring. This work centres around the collection of health data from municipal wastewater, and particularly that of viruses that are known to be pathogenic. A new national mandate has also been introduced for the analysis of substances related to pharmaceutical and illicit drug use.

Sociologist and political scientist Lisa Deutsch was awarded the ETH Medal for her doctoral thesis written at Eawag and ETH Zurich. Her research demonstrated how interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research can be successful and how theory and practice can be effectively combined in research.

A new study provides precise data on the origin of plastic in the sea. It could be key to reducing this pollution in a targeted way.

For years, Eawag has been committed to ensuring that its research findings are "open access" – in other words, accessible free of charge. Within the Swiss higher education landscape, its proportion of scientific publications that are open access is therefore among the highest.