News archive

August 4, 202225 years ago, urine-diverting toilets were no more than an idea, challenging the central paradigm of wastewater treatment plants. Since then, however, modular water technologies have become increasingly important. Using a new method, scientists at Eawag have mapped the dynamics of this transition.

July 28, 2022Over the last six years, more than 160,000 people around the world have participated in online courses offered by Eawag, thus acquiring valuable knowledge about, for example, sanitation systems or municipal solid waste management.

July 19, 2022Even though industrial wastewater is treated at state-of-the art plants, the sheer variety of synthetic organic compounds from the chemical and pharmaceutical industry which end up in surface waters are seriously underestimated. This is shown by a new study carried out by Eawag and ETH Zurich.

July 18, 2022A study published today in Nature Microbiology highlights the great advantage of wastewater monitoring as being rapid, unbiased and cost-effective: the detection of genomic variants of SARS-CoV-2 in wastewater offers an early alert and can be based on fewer samples as compared to clinical samples. The bioinformatics tool developed by the groups of Niko Beerenwinkel and Tanja Stadler (ETH, Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering) in collaboration with Eawag and EPFL identifies variants of concern even at low abundance.

July 18, 2022As part of a new national research programme that aims to replace animal experiments in research, the National Science Foundation is supporting a project at Eawag. This opens up new possibilities for determining the toxicity of chemical substances based solely on tests with cultured cells and computer models. Animal experiments could thus be replaced.

July 15, 2022To strengthen the strategic priorities on sustainability and dialogue with society, the ETH Domain, of which Eawag is a part, will further strengthen and bundle its cooperation and coordination. The ETH Board approved a total of CHF 37 million for ten joint initiatives yesterday.

July 7, 2022On 15 September, after a two-year hiatus due to the pandemic, an Eawag Info Day will be held once again, dedicated to new technologies for monitoring surface waters. Physicist Damien Bouffard, Head of the Aquatic Physics Group at Eawag, was involved in its conception and explains in an interview what new opportunities and challenges these technologies bring.

June 29, 2022The 51-year-old succeeds Janet Hering, who is reaching retirement age. Martin Ackermann is group leader at Eawag and Professor of the Ecology of Microbial Systems at the ETH Zurich. He will take up his new post on 01 January 2023.

June 28, 2022Africa is home to a large part of the world's biodiversity. Many species are native only to this continent. So far, the genome of only a tiny proportion of them has been decoded, but this is an important prerequisite for their protection. The large-scale African BioGenome Project, in which Eawag researchers are also involved, now aims to change this.

June 27, 2022A facility with experimental ponds for field trials is located on the Eawag site in Dübendorf. The current experiment is investigating how the water lily aphid - a herbivore that lives both on land and on water - influences the development of the biocoenosis in water bodies.