Science Serving Society: Dr. Michael O. Hengartner on Leading the ETH Domain, the Craft of Teaching & Persuasion
- Sorina I. Crisan, PhD
- 2 days ago
- 25 min read
Updated: 24 hours ago
What does it look like to lead one of the world's most influential scientific institutions, while working at the intersection of education, government, and society? In this in-depth interview, Prof. Dr. Michael O. Hengartner, President of the ETH Board and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the ETH Domain — Switzerland's federal university system, which encompasses ETH Zurich, EPFL in Lausanne, and four national research institutes — offers a rare and candid look behind the scenes of an institution that shapes Swiss science, innovation, and public policy at the highest level.
Born in Switzerland and raised in Quebec, Dr. Hengartner trained as a biochemist at the University of Laval before completing his PhD at MIT, where a single conversation about programmed cell death changed the course of his scientific career. That willingness to follow a gut feeling over a carefully laid plan became one of the most defining threads of a remarkable journey: from C. elegans research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, to winning the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching, to pursuing an executive MBA at IMD while running a lab and raising a family, to his current role navigating the complex terrain between academia, government, and Swiss society.
In this interview, you will learn about Hengartner's: views on what makes a great educator and why humor belongs in the classroom; philosophy on flipped classrooms, peer learning, and the role of technology in higher education; advice for teaching assistants and early-career academics; account of the pivotal career moment at MIT that changed everything; reflections on Ikigai and how to find your professional sweet spot; vision for the ETH Domain's strategic priorities, from cybersecurity and energy transition to quantum technologies; plans for restructuring Switzerland's national research institutes into a more agile, unified structure; definition of persuasion and the central role it plays in leading at the intersection of education and government; and the ancient Stoic philosophy that helps him stay calm and purposeful in turbulent times.
As always, the conversation concludes with personal and career advice meant to inspire junior scholars, teaching assistants, and anyone navigating a rapidly changing professional landscape.
Interview by Sorina I. Crisan – Matthey de l’Endroit, PhD
This interview is part of the Educators: Academic, Non-Academic & Hybrid series, which profiles educators across disciplines, institutions, and sectors — exploring how they teach, lead, and shape the minds of the next generation. To listen to the interview on Spotify or YouTube — see links at the end of the article.
I. Leading Switzerland's Federal University System
Question 1: Could you describe your current role and position as President of the ETH Domain?
Answer 1: The ETH Domain is Switzerland's federal university system, if you will. It consists of the country's two technical universities: ETH Zurich and EPFL in Lausanne. What is quite special about this system is that it also includes four national research laboratories. In many other countries, such laboratories exist separately from universities, which tends to generate silos and integration challenges. In our case, they are part of the same family. The PSI (Paul Scherrer Institute), Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology), Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology), and WSL (Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research) are all part of the ETH Domain.
The ETH Board functions as the board of trustees — or board of directors, if you prefer — of this group. We sit at the intersection of academia, politics, and government. My direct boss is Mr. Guy Parmelin, the Federal Councillor heading the Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research (EAER). It is a very unique, but also a very interesting, position to be in.
Question 2: If you were to describe one or two typical days in your life, what do they look like?
Answer 2: They are all different. Most of my time is spent talking to people and enabling other people to talk to each other. Formally, we are responsible for ensuring that the government's political and strategic decisions are implemented, while also explaining to government the needs and requirements that our universities must meet in order to serve society. We need to ensure that the institutions coordinate well with one another.
My guiding motto is: how do we best serve Switzerland? How can we collectively invest the significant funds we receive from taxpayers — people like you — for the greatest benefit of our society? That also means listening to stakeholders: politicians, industry leaders, students — hearing what their needs, wishes, and ideas are. There are many, many brilliant people in this Domain. We have over a thousand professors, all with outstanding ideas, and our role is to identify the best of those and allow them to flourish — to productively generate solutions for society.
II: On the Craft of Teaching & Advice to Educators
Question 3: You also teach and have taught previously. Could you describe your field — what it was and what it is currently?
Answer 3: I studied biochemistry as an undergrad, then became a geneticist, and now I would call myself a developmental cancer biologist. I was teaching molecular biology and molecular genetics. In my day, the first-semester molecular genetics course covered DNA making RNA and protein — the Central Dogma.
At the University of Zurich, we had a very large class, with over 600 undergraduate students. And that is probably the best time to teach, because the students are new to university, with wide eyes, and you can still impress them.
As well, I often taught a master's-level course on post-transcriptional gene regulation, where we investigated how you can control which genes are active, not at the transcription level of making RNA, but at the later steps. That is a field that remains very active today because we are still learning a great deal. There was a lot of movement, a lot of exciting developments, and it was also fairly closely related to what I was doing in my own lab, where we were conducting C. elegans research — small invertebrate model organisms, somewhat similar to Drosophila — and that kept me quite busy, both in my research days and my teaching days.
Question 4: How did you initially become interested in teaching?
Answer 4: It must have been intrinsic motivation. I started teaching as an undergrad, by TA-ing some lab classes. Initially, I suppose I did that just to earn money. But I genuinely enjoyed explaining to people how things work. And apparently, they enjoyed listening to me, because I received positive feedback.
Then as a graduate student at MIT, I also TA-ed courses, which was different, but interesting. And, when I received my first job offer at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, one of the things I listed as a drawback about their job offer was that I would not be a professor and I would have no teaching duties. Most of my colleagues thought, well, that is the fantastic part of this job, and I thought, well, that is actually sad. So, I decided to volunteer to teach a little at Stony Brook University, which was nearby and from which we could also recruit PhD students. And I also began volunteering to teach at the graduate level at various other institutions, like the Rockefeller University. As well, I did a wonderful course for many years with colleagues in Portugal.
The energy you get from teaching, from watching clever young people gain knowledge, gain insight, ask really clever questions is extraordinary — and, in my case, I get energy out of it. You have to put a lot of energy into it, and I remember being exhausted after my lectures. But you also receive so much positive energy in return. So, I would say that I like teaching because it is a win-win for me and for the students.
III. What Makes a Great Educator
Question 5: You have received several awards for your teaching, including the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teaching here in Switzerland. Based on your experience across different institutions in various countries, what do you think is the key to being a good educator?
Answer 5: As an educator, you are partly a coach, partly a tutor, partly a mentor. The learning happens in the head of the student, not in yours. So my advice is to stop trying to maximize content, catalyze instead. They say: light the fire. And I am absolutely convinced that is true.
In other words, you need to get students interested in learning the material, and then it will happen by itself. Figure out where they have a problem and try to understand it. Ask questions rather than simply making statements. Where is the limit of their understanding? Is there a particular challenge they are facing? And then work through those challenges together with the students. With today's technology, content provision can often be handled by technology, and often that is better done than by some random person at the blackboard or on PowerPoint at the front of the room.
What we are very good at, based on our experience and our fundamentally human ability to interact with people, is sensing where we can add value: either generating more internal energy in a student, or addressing a particular barrier they need help to overcome.
Question 6: If I understand correctly, you are advocating for minimizing how much information we transmit during class time and maximizing the depth of student understanding.
Answer 6: In theory, yes. On paper, I am a huge fan of flipped classrooms. The big challenge, in my experience, is ensuring that the flip part has actually happened. If the student arrives in the classroom without having read the material, there is not much to discuss. That is why many of my colleagues fall back on presenting the material themselves because then, at least, you know the students have seen it.
But if you have the luxury of smaller class sizes, or you can ensure students do access the material beforehand, then there are fantastic tools available today: videos, podcasts — like the one you do — films, or AI-supported learning. A lot of this content provision is probably done better by others. And, in my class, I chose a textbook, which I did not write myself. Someone else was better at writing textbooks than I was, and so I picked theirs. You could pretend you are the best at explaining the textbook, but perhaps you are not. Perhaps there are videos that explain the difficult material far better.
So what can you add? What no one else can provide is the personal interaction with the students. And the main challenge, simply put, is: when you have 600 students in the room, how do you care for all 600 at the same time? That is a huge challenge, and in those cases, clickers (handheld audience response devices that allow every student to answer a question simultaneously) and small group discussions help. For example, we created buzz groups — small, informal peer discussion groups of three or four students — where the idea was to turn to your colleague and discuss, peer to peer, and check whether you had all understood the material in the same way. Activating peer learning, activating interaction is actually where I see our added value. The rest we can do, but there are other ways to do it just as well.
Question 7: Many of our listeners are teaching assistants — PhD students, for example. What is your advice to teaching assistants so that they can maximize their interactions with students?
Answer 7: They are privileged, because they already work with smaller groups. They actually have a chance to get on a first-name basis with all of their students, and building that relationship early helps a great deal. It reduces the students' fear and increases their trust — their willingness to look a little silly and ask a question, which is good.
So: build that trust early. The first thing I said whenever I entered a new class was, "Hi, I am Michael. Please just call me Michael. We are here to learn together."
The other thing I recommend to everyone is: go and learn how to teach. There are didactic principles one can actually learn. You can learn them on your own, by trial and error — but why would you, when there are far better ways? Most of my really good teaching I shamelessly copied from other people I watched teach. I thought: he is doing that really well. I should do that too. And it largely works. So do not be shy about stealing from the best. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
And the final thing — I am a big fan of using humor. It opens up the atmosphere, it brings energy back into the room, and it shows that one can have fun and learn at the same time.
IV. Role Models, Continuous Learning & the Executive MBA
Question 8: Who is one of your role models when it comes to teaching?
Answer 8: When I decided to become Dean of the Faculty of Science at the University of Zurich, I did an executive MBA — because I realized: I am going to be in charge of a hundred million a year. You had better know what you are doing. One of the teachers in that program, it was an early morning class, and I always came early — I was a “streber” [“overachiever”], even then — that professor came into the room and put on some rock and roll music at 7:15 in the morning. And I just thought: yes. Everybody is awake, everybody is in a good mood.
So I started doing that myself. I was teaching at 8:00 AM on Monday mornings. I would show up at 7:30, start setting up, and put on my own playlist — a new one every week. And the students were awake. Every now and then, one of them would actually come down afterwards and ask: what was that song? Who was that musician? Completely unrelated to the content, of course. But it made them more ready to be there and to pay attention.
Question 9: That actually pivots nicely into something I read online — that you chose later in life to pursue an executive MBA at IMD. You already had a PhD and so many other credentials. Why did you make that choice?
Answer 9: You should never think you know it all. You should always keep learning. And as I said, you can learn by trial and error — but that can be expensive in terms of time, and in this case it could also have been expensive in terms of money for the faculty. So I simply decided: I owe it to the faculty to be as good a dean as I possibly can. Managing a large group of people — I thought there are probably some do’s and don’ts that you can learn from the experts, and that is what these management courses are about.
I was not entirely sure what I was getting into. At the end, it was genuinely useful. I would do it again without hesitation. Not everything was directly applicable — running a business is not the same as running a faculty of a large university. But most of it translated well. Perhaps the hardest part was supply chain management. I kept wondering: who are my suppliers — the students coming in from the gymnasium? But most of it was translatable, and some areas — leadership, strategy — are directly applicable.
I also learned how business people think, how they learn, how they work. That was helpful for my later interactions with people from the private sector. And an MBA gives you a certain credibility. As an academic talking to industry leaders, they sometimes think you are a little strange. This shows that you are a serious kind of strange. So it helped in those conversations.
And finally — I became very good at time management. My dear wife was pregnant with our fourth child while I was doing this; I was running a lab, I was already Vice Dean, and I had this course on top of everything. I became very efficient, very quickly. That has been enormously useful for everything that followed.
V. On Career Trajectory & Following Your Ikigai
Question 10: Staying with the topic of your educational journey — what was another pivotal educational experience that in retrospect helped you reach your current position?
Answer 10: You know, I think you should always have plans, but then you should be willing to throw them away if something interesting comes your way. Part of my career was things I planned on doing, and part of it was somebody knocking on my door and saying, hey Michael, how about this?
My move to Europe came about while I was at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, happily doing my research there. It is a fantastic place — a monastery of science, where you can really focus on science, science, science. And then one day, someone came around. He said he was a professor at the University of Zurich and that they had a newly endowed chair. They knew I was Swiss — I was born in Switzerland. That is true. I left the country when I was six months old, but I had the passport. And they said: we want you back.
I had never thought about applying for a job in Switzerland. But I looked at the offer. It was a very good offer. And I thought: why not? Being open to new opportunities is very important. And then being ready to take a jump into uncomfortable terrain. The biggest recommendation I have is this: you will only grow if you go out of your comfort zone. You can plan for that, or you can stumble into it — some people are forced into it, which is less comfortable. But take every opportunity you can, because that is where you learn the most. And given our life expectancy, especially for people your age — learn early, learn often. It will make you a fantastic collaborator in the future.
Question 11: Speaking of career trajectory — what was a pivotal career choice for you early on?
Answer 11: Early on — so, I went to MIT because of my favorite teacher. I grew up in Quebec and attended the University of Laval, a French university in Quebec City. My favorite teacher there was a genetics professor, and he had done his PhD at MIT. So I thought: well, he did his PhD at MIT. Maybe I should do my PhD at MIT.
I applied, and I actually went to interview in advance with David Baltimore — a Nobel Prize winner, the discoverer of reverse transcriptase. He was working on transcription factors, and I thought: NF-κB, one of the transcription factors he was working on — fantastic. I am going to work with him. So I went to MIT specifically to work with David Baltimore.
But the way MIT worked at the time, you could not directly join a lab. You had to take a year of classes first, then interview with different research groups, and only after something like eight months decide which lab you would join. I told everyone: I came here to work with David Baltimore on NF-κB. Everyone nodded. But I felt I should do my due diligence, so I interviewed with a few other people.
Completely by chance, I interviewed with a man named Bob Horvitz, who was working on C. elegans. Initially I thought: why am I even talking to this guy? And then, in the last five minutes of that one-hour interview, he told me about a process I had never heard of — Programmed Cell Death. It just floored me. It was a process where cells commit suicide. And as a biochemist, I simply could not understand how this could be. How can organisms be so wasteful? Do you know how much ATP you generate just to make a cell — and then you just throw it away? It bugged me. I said: I have to figure out why organisms do that.
Within two weeks, I had completely changed my mind. I told everyone I was going to work with Bob. I had to call up this Nobel Prize winner and say: I am very sorry, Professor Baltimore, but I have changed my mind. I am going to work on worms. My colleagues said: you could work with a Nobel Prize winner — why on earth would you want to work with worms? But that was a pivotal moment. I thought I was throwing away my career. In the process, I built it.
Question 12: It is so interesting when people just listen to themselves. As you said, sometimes you do have to throw away your plans and go with your intuition. How would you describe that — when we change our minds so abruptly?
Answer 12: A gut feeling. It is something within you saying: go for it. There was no rational reason to do it. It was intuition in the best sense — an urge. And I felt: this is where your passion is going to be.
You may know the concept of Ikigai — finding a sweet spot in your life. Something people pay you for, that you are good at, and that you love doing. I already knew I would love doing it, and that I would be good at it. Whether someone would pay me for it was less clear — but at least for my graduate courses, they would pay me. So for the next five years, I was all right. I had found my Ikigai.
It was not a hard decision internally. There was some explaining to do to others. But I was absolutely convinced it was the right thing.
Question 13: What is your advice to others trying to listen to their Ikigai?
Answer 13: Find it. Follow it. Find what you are good at and what you are passionate about. We scientists often say we get paid to do our hobbies — and in a certain sense, that is true. It is an absolute privilege to have an exciting job that pays you well. And the fourth part of Ikigai is something that gives you a sense of purpose. Being a teacher gives you that. So it all just adds up. I keep saying I have the best job in town. And I truly believe it.
VI. Teaching Across Cultures & Working Across Switzerland
Question 14: You mentioned that you taught both in the United States and in Switzerland. Are there similarities, or significant differences, between the two countries in terms of the academic system and teaching?
Answer 14: Not in theory — but in practice, the people you teach tend to be different, depending on the cultural backgrounds they bring with them. In the US, there tended to be more students who had come through the American education system; here in Switzerland, more who had come through the Swiss system. But then again, all the universities I worked at were international, so you always get a broad mix of people.
Let me give you a good example. My opening line, as I mentioned — “Hi, I am Michael” — and this was a master’s class. There was a student from India, and he said: “Yes, Professor.” I said: “No, no, please call me Michael.” “Yes, Professor.” “No, you are not getting me — please call me Michael.” And the furthest he was able to go, with the full force of his will, was: “Yes, Professor Michael.” It was not bad will on his part at all. It is simply that this person had grown up in a completely different cultural background, and I was trying to impose my cultural background onto his. In the end, we had to meet each other somewhere we both felt as comfortable as we could.
But that was an important lesson for me too. At the end of the day, we do not need to be in an environment where I am comfortable. We need to be in an environment where the student is comfortable. That said, I do not want to keep them comfortable — I want to start them comfortable, and then push them to their limit, so that they can grow.
Question 15: And speaking of work environments — is it correct to think that you are working from multiple locations at the same time?
Answer 15: I have my garden and my bed in Zurich. That is where my private home is. I have offices in Zurich and in Bern, and some workspace in Lausanne. I travel quite a bit. When people ask me where I am most of the time, I tend to answer: in the train.
And there are also a lot of conferences — as you and I met recently at one. My job is meeting people. My job is talking to people. So I tend to go where the people are, because that is more convenient for them. Often I want something from them, so I go and visit. Or I have information to share, and then I go where the people are willing to listen. Every day is different, but I meet new people every day.
VII. On the ETH Domain's Strategic Vision
Question 16: For listeners who may not be very familiar with the ETH Domain — what are its current strategic priorities?
Answer 16: On the one hand, we try to prioritize things that are important for society, in terms of current or future challenges. These are the classical things one thinks about: climate change, energy transition, digitalization including AI, aging societies, and so forth. That is the first dimension.
On the other hand, these must be challenges where we as a Domain can contribute better than others, either on our own or in cooperation with partners. There are some challenges where we are simply not the right tool. For example, Switzerland lacks nurses and we do not have a curriculum in nursing, so we cannot really help with this challenge and others need to address it. Meanwhile, when there is a lack of electrical engineers and civil engineers, that is a challenge where we can make a real contribution. So, when you think of aging societies, this concern goes together with university hospitals, and we need to collaborate with others to solve that challenge because we cannot do it alone, but on the other hand we do have medical engineers, so we can contribute to this challenge from that angle.
Overall and as previously mentioned, if you look at the portfolio of challenges where we can contribute, you get the classical fields: human health, energy, climate, biodiversity, digitalization. We have what we call “dialogue with society”, and all the new key technologies coming our way — from advanced materials to quantum to space. And then security and sovereignty. In the new geopolitical environment Switzerland needs to ensure it has the tools required to continue making decisions independently. That encompasses cybersecurity, but also water security, energy security, and defense security.
All of this, of course, we have to do with partners. These are the areas where we are investing a great deal of our energy — hiring new faculty, thinking about how to set up new forms of cooperation. A lot of it requires new types of collaboration, because no single professor has the expertise to address these challenges alone. It is always groups of people, often across institutional boundaries. And then finally, how do we engage with policymakers so that these options can actually be implemented? We can generate a “menu”, but politicians and policymakers have to choose from it. And we simply want to make sure they know what each “dish” is about — and what the pros and cons of each option are — so that they can choose wisely, on behalf of our society.
Question 17: You are currently working towards creating one legal entity for several of the research institutes — something along the lines of a Swiss National Lab. Why is creating this new entity strategically necessary?
Answer 17: “Necessary” is a big word. I think it would be beneficial. In our family, as I mentioned, we have two universities — both fairly large — and four research institutes. These institutes are all smaller than the universities, and they are quite heterogeneous in size. The smallest ones, WSL and Eawag, are roughly the size of a department at ETH, and perhaps two to three percent of the total budget.
The research institutions do a fantastic job within their remit and mandate. For example, Eawag is the water research institute of the Federation, and one of the world's top water research institutes. The challenge is that these institutes were each created with particular missions that they address. And they were created at moments when society said: Houston, we have a problem. In the case of Eawag, it began as a consulting arm of ETH in the early twentieth century, when Switzerland realized that its lakes and rivers were polluted and something had to be done.
Today we are faced again with a whole new set of challenges — climate change, energy transition, and so forth. And I am simply convinced that we cannot afford to create a new research institute every time a new challenge arises, because before we know it, we will have twenty of them. What I think we need instead is a mechanism that allows us to pick up new challenges far more nimbly and generate the expertise required — to consult with government, or to generate options for policymakers.
As an example, let’s take digital transformation and cybersecurity. If you ask Eawag what they have done to address the societal challenge of cybersecurity, they will say: Michael, I am a water research institute. Cybersecurity is not my remit. And they would be right — because cybersecurity was not a challenge fifty years ago, so no one was put in charge of it. So either we have a system where the current institutions expand their mandate to pick up these new challenges, or we create a new overarching structure and simply say: together, from now on, if there is a concrete challenge, you are collectively in charge.
This would be similar to the case of ETH and EPFL which are able to generate new knowledge and create new structures when they see a new challenge. For instance, ETH created the Department of Health Sciences and Technology when it became clear that engineering needed to come much closer to medicine. And EPFL created Neuro-X, bringing together neurobiology, engineering, life sciences, and computer science in one institute. I would like to see the same thing happen in the research institute domain: concrete, applied knowledge generated proactively, not only once the problem is already upon us, but when we see it coming — because often we do see it coming ahead of time.
There are different ways to implement this. One would be to merge the current institutes into one large institute and say: from now on, you are responsible across all these areas. Another would be a system where these institutions collectively agree to expand their competencies as the needs of society evolve. We are currently in consultation with them and remain open to different approaches. As long as the goal is achieved, I am fairly flexible about how we get there. In the end, the solution is important, not how we implement it.
VIII. On Success Mindset & the Role of Persuasion
Question 18: The work you do today is complex, similar to many puzzle pieces that somehow need to fit with one another. And since my work also focuses on mindset, I am curious: what is the success mindset you think you need to have in the back of your mind when you are juggling so many moving pieces?
Answer 18: You raise an interesting point. In academia, the big challenge is the enormous amount of freedom that we have — as institutions, as individuals, as subgroups. And so the question becomes: how do you ensure that an idea finds enough volunteers, in a certain sense — people who believe in it and are willing to go along with it — so that it will actually happen?
If you are a leader, you need to be ahead of the group. You need to lead. Some people have a tendency to get so far ahead of the group that they are no longer ahead of it — they are simply alone. What I have learned is that one has to be patient. And you have to have mechanisms to encourage people to share your vision.
There are many ways to do that, and they all add up. Allowing other people to take ownership, for one. Often, the good idea is not your idea — it is somebody else's idea, and you are simply enabling it. Also, good arguments are powerful in academia; we are trained to fight with arguments. So if you have good arguments, the other person may not necessarily like what you propose, but they understand it and say: well, all right, grumble, grumble — but okay. And often, a little financial support goes a long way, even in academic settings.
When you are dealing with colleagues outside of academia, you need a different toolbox entirely. For example, in politics, arguments only get you so far. There, commonality of interests matters more. What do you care about? What do you want to accomplish? Where do we see overlap? The saying goes: in academia, in the end, the truth wins. In politics, in the end, the majority wins. Both are valid mechanisms for reaching a decision — they are simply different types of decision-making processes.
Some of the frustration I often see in my scientist colleagues engaging with the political process comes from their failure to understand that politicians work differently. I have had colleagues say to me: but I explained it to them — how can they not see it? And the answer is: they have seen it. They simply have different mechanisms for arriving at decisions.
So all these different aspects make the job not easy, but very stimulating.
Question 19: My research also focuses on persuasion, and I would like to know: what is your definition of it?
Answer 19: Persuasion is essentially getting somebody excited about something you would like them to be excited about, so that they will do it. Your idea or your plan becomes their plan. Your project becomes their project. That, I think, is what persuasion is about: getting people to join the team.
Question 20: In your current work, does persuasion play a major role?
Answer 20: It is the only way forward in the role I have. And how you achieve persuasion works differently depending on who is your discussion partner. Are you talking to someone who works for you, someone who works with you, someone you work for, or someone who is simply peripherally attached to your sphere of influence? All of these different constellations require different approaches to persuasion.
There is also the need for openness to being persuaded yourself. Often, the better idea is in the other person's head. So being willing to be flexible, to adjust your goals to arrive at common goals matters as well. And, it is rarely the case that the final solution is exactly what you initially had in mind. Particularly in Switzerland, compromise tends to be where you end up. My definition of compromise is something nobody is happy with, but everybody can live with. But if it is a step in the right direction, then take it and celebrate it. Rome was not built in one day.
Question 21: And when you were teaching, what role did persuasion play in the craft of teaching?
Answer 21: I am not sure it did, really. I would rather say: get students excited, get them interested. I am not sure you need to persuade them of anything. Teaching is simply making sure people learn. I do not need to persuade them of anything. But I need to encourage them to learn.
I do not think persuasion is a key tool in teaching. It would be strange if it were. If I were an ideologist, perhaps I would want to persuade them that my theory is correct. But teaching is something completely different.
IX. Looking Ahead: Advice for the Next Generation
Question 22: Before our last question, is there any burning topic you would like to address?
Answer 22: We have not talked about the challenges for young people in a world that is changing so fast. It is a challenge for us as universities to know how and what to teach. And again, the best recommendation I can give is: keep learning, keep being flexible and agile, never rest on what you know, keep being curious. That is probably your best bet in the long run.
But we are living in times that are less comfortable, I think, than when I was a young man. I have quite a few children — six, in fact — and I do my best to encourage them to follow their dreams while at the same time staying optimistic. So I have become a big fan of the ancient Stoics. The Stoics had a philosophy that I find very useful: take everything that happens in life and sort it into one of two baskets. A very large basket of things you cannot influence, and a small basket of things you can. Take that large basket, set it aside. You cannot influence it. Stop worrying about it. Focus your energy on the small basket filled with things you can influence and do something about it. Make the world a better place by focusing on what you can influence.
That philosophy gives me a great deal of positive energy and allows me to become — how can I put this — a little calmer, a little more serene about all the terrible things that are currently happening but over which I have no influence.
Question 23: What advice would you give to students and early-career professionals who are inspired by this conversation and wish to follow in your footsteps?
Answer 23: Do not try to follow my footsteps. Find your own path.
Thank you for reading.
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President of the ETH Board and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the ETH Domain | Switzerland
*Note: This interview was recorded on April 10, 2026, and has been edited for clarity and length.
**Illustrations: The profile photo included in this interview is by Daniel Kellenberger, ETH Board. The main article photo is by Andreas Eggenberger, ETH Board.
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