News archive

When a population grows quickly and farms intensively, the environment often suffers. This is not only true today, but was also the case as early as Roman times. Evidence of this has been found by Eawag researchers in sediments in Lake Murten. Read more

Once again, an Eawag doctoral candidate is awarded the Otto-Jaag Water Protection Prize: Wenfeng Liu was honoured for his dissertation "Modelling Global Water-Food-Environment-Trade Nexus in the Context of Agricultural Intensification". The Otto Jaag Water Protection Prize honours outstanding dissertations and master's theses at ETH Zurich in the field of water protection and hydrology. Read more

There’s a new face at the fishing advisory office (FIBER) in Kastanienbaum: Philip Dermond is taking over from Sébastien Nusslé and is thus the new co-director with Corinne Schmid. Philip Dermond transferred in October from the Fish Ecology and Evolution department at Eawag to FIBER. Read more

Scientists at Eawag and Zurich University have synthesised for the first time the amounts of carbon transported between many different ecosystems. According to this global synthesis, spatial flows of carbon can be very large – and their significance has previously been underestimated. Read more

Many infectious viruses are transferred to humans from water or other liquids. A microbiologist at Eawag has now investigated how high the risk of infection is when someone comes into contact with polluted water. Read more

Michael Berg, head of the Eawag Water Resources and Drinking Water department, has been appointed adjunct professor with the School of Civil Engineering and Surveying at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). His appointment is linked to becoming one of the members of the “UNESCO Chair on Groundwater Arsenic”, which is based at the USQ. Read more

It is common among many species for individuals to move around during their lifetime in order to settle in better adapted habitats, a process known as dispersion by ecologists. In order to improve scientific predictions of the future of biodiversity in the face of global changes it is very important to understand the mechanisms of dispersion. Read more

Bits of genetic material in rivers make it possible to detect the organisms living in them – without having to collect these and examine them under the microscope. Researchers at Eawag, the ETH and the EPFL have now developed a computer model that with the help of single DNA measurements even simulates exactly where and how often the species are present in bodies of water. Read more

Probiotics – live bacteria with beneficial effects on human health – are believed to hold out great promise for certain therapeutic applications. But do these bacteria remain viable when they are frozen or freeze-dried for storage? Eawag’s expertise in drinking water microbiology enabled to it provide valuable support for a study of gut microbes carried out in the Food Biotechnology Laboratory at ETH Zurich. Read more

Yesterday, the Ecotox Centre Eawag-EPFL celebrated its tenth anniversary in the City Hall of Berne. Around 80 guests from politics, administration, science, and practice toasted the successful establishment of the Centre and the milestones achieved over the past 10 years. Read more