Honorary councillors and honorary doctorates
Honorary councillors
The title of Honorary Councillor is awarded to individuals who foster key scientific activities or fields of work at ETH, or who support the university as a whole.
ETH appointed the following honorary councillors in 2025:
Heinz M. Buhofer
for his successful entrepreneurial work, his extraordinary commitment to research, innovation ecosystems, the future of energy and young entrepreneurship.
Dr Hanspeter F?ssler
for his extraordinary commitment to ETH Zurich and the ETH Foundation, as well as his long-standing membership of the Industrial Advisory Board of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, his support for numerous ETH spin-offs and his mentoring of young talent.
Honorary councillors of the last 20 years:
For information on honours before 2004:
Honorary doctorates
By awarding honorary doctorates, ETH Zurich honours individuals for their outstanding scientific work and recognises their important contribution to science, education and practical applications, or to the synthesis of research and practical work.
ETH awarded the following honorary doctorates in 2025:
Professor Mercouri Kanatzidis
for groundbreaking advances in solid-state chemistry, the innovative development of novel materials and their effective application in practice.
Professor Alexandra Navrotsky
for her outstanding contributions to the fundamental understanding of the thermodynamics of various classes of materials and her significant influence on solid state chemistry, mineralogy and materials science.
Professor George Sterman
for his groundbreaking theoretical research in particle physics, in particular the discovery of concepts and structures in quantum chromodynamics that serve as the basis for the theoretical interpretation of collision experiments and enable precise tests of the fundamental laws of nature in high-energy physics.
Mierle Laderman Ukeles
in recognition of her pioneering work and her highly acclaimed international contributions to the topics of care, maintenance, feminism and sustainability in art, architecture and urban planning.
Honorary doctorates of the last 10 years:
For information on honours prior to 2004, please contact the ETH Zurich archive:
ETH Day
By tradition, it is on the ETH Day, a day of academic celebration, that ETH Zurich honours those individuals who have helped it to become one of the world’s leading universities.