Joint success: D-USYS Master's ceremony 2025 unites Agricultural and Environmental Sciences
The Agricultural and Environmental Sciences 2025 graduation ceremony at ETH Zurich was something special: More than thirteen years after the merger of the Institute of Agricultural Sciences and the Department of Environmental Sciences to form the newly founded Department of Environmental Systems Sciences (D-USYS), the graduates of Environmental Sciences and Agricultural Sciences celebrated their graduation together.
Around 140 graduates and their next of kin attended the big ceremony in the Paul Scherrer lecture hall at ETH Zurich. They were welcomed by the moderation duo Anna Shalin (Environmental Sciences graduate) and Lorin Semela (Agricultural Sciences graduate), who could not have led the evening more confidently.
In the speech that followed, Georg Schäppi, who completed his ETH degree in Environmental Sciences in 1992, made an urgent appeal to the graduates. "The world doesn't look good everywhere. But you can change it!" said Schäppi. "With the talent you have already brought with you to university and the tools you have now been given, you even have a kind of moral obligation to do so." Schäppi was CEO of the Zurich Kinderspital and has now taken over the management of the Kühne Foundation (medical campus) in Davos. Thinking in complex systems and finding the leverage for change were among the skills he learnt at ETH Zurich and that have accompanied him ever since, emphasised the former graduate.
After the keynote speech, Head of Department Nicolas Gruber took to the stage to present the prizewinners with their awards.
- Willi Studer Prize for the best degrees:
- Agricultural Sciences: Finn Jonathan Timcke (overall grade 5.71)
- Environmental Sciences: Eliane Ballmer (overall grade 5.94)
- ETH medals for outstanding Master's theses:
- Agricultural Sciences: Hanna Blum for her Master's thesis: "Genetic Determination of Self-Compatibility and Determinate Growth Habit in Common Buckwheat"
- Environmental Sciences: Samuel Zweifel for his Master's thesis: "Growth allocation patterns along the stem of Pinus sylvestris growing under drought stress and varying water supply"
- Environmental Sciences: Jill Barbier for her Master's thesis: "Nest site selection and reproductive success of the Bali-Mynah (Leucopsar rothschildi): an ecological field study"
- Environmental Sciences: Jessica Carilli for her Master's thesis: "Soil and stem greenhouse gases fluxes of a seasonally inundated non-peat forming swamp forest in Congo's Cuvette Centrale"
- Wilhelm Schaumann Prize: Alana Schudel for her Master's thesis: "Lactational performance and nitrogen efficiency of dairy cows on low protein diets with supplemental energy and rumen-protected histidine"
- Hans Vontobel Prize: Dr Astrid Jäger for her doctoral thesis: "Beneath the pines: Response of the soil microbiome in Scots pine (Pinus sylvestris) to prolonged water limitation"
- UMNW Prize: Nicolà Bossard for his Master's thesis: "You are connected to everything: Practical examples and narratives of change for a transformative Swiss agroecology"
As always, the centrepiece of the ceremony was the congratulatory sequence, in which the graduates were honoured individually and as a group.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to the successful ceremony!
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