Technology

Together with teams from England and Germany, Empa researchers developed a monitoring system for aircraft components. In the future, minor damage could be detected and monitored during flight without the aircraft having to go into the hangar for maintenance. This will reduce operating costs and increase safety at the same time.

ETH Zurich researchers have created artificial colours by 3D printing certain nanostructures inspired by those of a butterfly. This principle can be used in the future to produce colour screens.

ETH researchers have used computer simulations to show that tissue structure in different types of cancer is decisive in determining how a tumour develops. This information could make it possible to treat patients in a more targeted manner in future.

A system developed by Grégoire Courtine and Jocelyne Bloch now enables patients with a complete spinal cord injury to stand, walk and even perform recreational activities like swimming, cycling and canoeing. 

Can you see sounds? Obviously not. Nevertheless, this Gallery attempts the seemingly impossible, building a visual bridge to the soundscape the ear perceives all around PSI.

Twelve years of intense work are now bearing fruit – researchers at Empa have developed unique carbon materials with quite astonishing, hitherto unattained electronic and magnetic properties, which one day could be used to build quantum computers with novel architectures. A million-dollar grant from the Werner Siemens Foundation for the next ten years now gives this visionary project an unusually long research horizon, greatly increasing the prospects for success.