ETH Entrepreneurship Award for Eleni Chatzi and Ingo Burgert
Double honour for the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering: at the Dandelion Entrepreneurship Awards, Professor Eleni Chatzi and Professor Ingo Burgert were each honoured with first prize in the categories ‘Inspirer & Entrepreneurial Educator’ and ‘Connector & Venture Enabler’, respectively.
The Dandelion Entrepreneurship Awards are presented annually at ETH Zurich and recognise professors who demonstrate exceptional commitment to fostering entrepreneurship – through teaching, mentoring or supporting spin-offs. The 2025 awards were announced today at the DeepTech Investor Summit, a platform for exchange between research and the start-up scene.
Professor Eleni Chatzi heads the Chair of Structural Mechanics and Monitoring at ETH Zurich. She was awarded first prize in the category ‘Inspirer & Entrepreneurial Educator’. Her research advances data-driven methods to observe, assess, and predict the behaviour of infrastructure and other complex systems, integrating sensor technologies, machine learning, and high-fidelity computational simulations. Eleni Chatzi is strongly committed to fostering students’ entrepreneurial mindsets, actively supports start-up initiatives, and guides students and researchers in translating innovative ideas into real-world impact. She is also a co-founder of the ETH spin-off RTDT, an advisor to irmos technologies, and host of the ETH Pioneer Fellowship Builtstop.
Professor Ingo Burgert heads the Chair of Wood Materials Science at ETH Zurich and Empa. He was awarded first prize in the category ‘Connector & Venture Enabler Award’. His research on sustainable, bio-inspired wood and functional materials provides a foundation for new applications, collaborations and spin-offs. In addition, Ingo Burgert is actively involved as a mentor and networker between academia, industry and the start-up ecosystem, with a strong focus on transferring scientific knowledge into entrepreneurial and industrial applications.
