Ideas don\u2019t fall out of the sky. According to Peter Chen, anyone who wants to be truly innovative needs to understand the story behind an idea. The chemistry professor, who has spent more than three decades at ETH Zurich, is himself fond of storytelling.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the story behind his most fascinating research finding: Chen and his team were investigating a novel approach suggesting that certain nitrogen compounds could facilitate new types of reactions. However, they found \u2013 much to their dismay \u2013 that this research method had already been published in 1960 by future Chemistry Nobel laureate Georg Wittig. But why had this approach faded into obscurity?<\/p>\n
Chen spoke with former members of Wittig\u2019s group, which brought surprising information to light: Wittig had inappropriately added himself as co-author to another researcher\u2019s paper and then assigned a doctoral student from his team to check the findings after developing misgivings. The student concluded that the experiment was not reproducible, leading Wittig to blame the original first author and disavow the publication himself in 1964.<\/p>\n
According to former group members, the student in question was known to be extremely meticulous when it came to conducting her experiments. This prompted Chen to develop a new hypothesis: Could it be that the original first author, unlike the student who checked his work, had a contaminant in the experiment that had a catalytic effect? Based on this story, Chen\u2019s team was able to demonstrate in 2015 that nickel \u2013 one of the possible contaminants \u2013 can be employed as a cost-effective and versatile catalyst for facilitating specific reactions. \u201cIntuition in dealing with people is sometimes just as important as understanding molecules,\u201d Chen remarks.<\/p>\n
A prodigy at ETH Zurich <\/p>\n
Chen was born in Salt Lake City in 1960, completed his chemistry studies in Chicago, quickly rose through the ranks at institutions like Yale and Harvard and was seen as a prodigy of sorts in the field of chemistry. When he was invited to ETH Zurich, he encountered something that he finds compelling to this day: \u201cUnlike in the US, here academics get a kind of \u2018academic venture capital\u2019 in the form of basic equipment and resources that come along with their professorship. This lets you test good ideas immediately and then submit proposals after testing their feasibility. This accelerates innovation, and when properly utilised, makes a major contribution to Switzerland\u2019s success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chen joined ETH Zurich in 1994. His wife was expecting their first child, and everything was unfamiliar: the country, the language and the university. To help himself adapt, he turned to Swiss stories, studying German so intensively that he was soon able to read Frisch and D\u00fcrrenmatt in the original. Just four years later, he was also teaching in German: \u201cMy students have an excellent grasp of English. However, when I speak German, I make shorter and less complicated sentences \u2013 which is obviously easier for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Educating Switzerland <\/p>\n
Chen was popular among students, and this popularity twice earned him the \u201cGolden Owl\u201d award for excellence in teaching \u2013 an honour that is close to his heart. He has trained countless chemists during his three decades at ETH Zurich. Many of them now hold key positions in the Swiss chemical industry. \u201cConsidering that the chemical industry comprises around 50% of Swiss exports, Peter Chen has made an essential contribution to the Swiss economy,\u201d says Helma Wennemers, also a professor of chemistry and one of Chen\u2019s long-time colleagues.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
What does Chen find so fascinating about chemistry? This is a question that he doesn\u2019t need long to answer. \u201cChemistry has its own internal logic. In chemistry, we can prove that we understand something by synthesising it. The appeal of chemistry is the ability to transform theories and ideas into something in the material world.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Serving on the Executive Board \u2013 Highlights <\/p>\n
Chen\u2019s enthusiasm for turning theory into reality led him to become Vice President for Research and Corporate Relations in 2007. Chen explains: \u201cI had been on various ETH committees for so long that I began developing ideas about how one might run a university and, at some point, I had to find out whether my ideas were correct.\u201d<\/p>\n
Many of his ideas succeeded: he was able to expand research funding and continue building ETH\u2019s research infrastructure. Chen negotiated a partnership with IBM, for example, and was an active supporter of computer science professor Markus Gross in founding the Disney Research Lab. Moreover, he successfully concluded the negotiations for the ETH Create Campus in Singapore.<\/p>\n
Chen was also expected to bring an old aspiration to fruition: establishing an ETH site in Basel. Sadly, no department was willing to transfer to Basel. \u201cThen I recalled a request from my time on the ETH Research Commission. Four professors from four different departments had proposed an interdisciplinary initiative \u2013 very visionary, but we didn\u2019t have the money for it at the time. But Basel opened up new opportunities,\u201d recalls Chen. The four professorships quickly got on board, and D-BSSE, as we know it today, was born.<\/p>\n
Darker hours <\/p>\n
In 2009, Chen unexpectedly stepped down from the Executive Board. He had suspicions that scientific data in a 2000 publication from his research group had been falsified. As a co-author, he retracted the publication and asked the Board to conduct a scientific inquiry into the matter.<\/p>\n
\u201cOnce you realise that something is amiss, the entire world changes,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s a matter of personal integrity. Anyone in this situation who insists on staying in their management role doesn\u2019t have the right characteristics needed to run a university. That\u2019s why I took the best course of action and stepped down.\u201d<\/p>\n
It has since become clear that Chen had been intentionally misled. He came to realise that it\u2019s possible to circumvent any system: \u201cA fair and correct result is ultimately always a question of character. Technical expertise alone isn\u2019t enough. We always have to ask ourselves whether someone is trustworthy and can resist the temptation to engage in academic misconduct.\u201d<\/p>\n
Always there to help <\/p>\n
By being principled and consistent, Chen gained a positive reputation within his department and throughout the university as a whole. He will continue to serve in his post as Integrity Adviser until his retirement. \u201cPeter is not just an exceptionally clever individual with a remarkable memory and impressive intellectual range. He also has a strong sense of justice,\u201d says Wennemers. \u201cHe is always there to help with advice and assistance, is polite and full of good, often out-of-the-box ideas. We will miss him greatly in the department.\u201d Peter Chen is an amazing storyteller and has written ETH history.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ideas don\u2019t fall out of the sky. According to Peter Chen, anyone who wants to be truly innovative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":33481,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3408,2686,1202,51],"class_list":{"0":"post-33480","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-zurich","8":"tag-d-chab","9":"tag-executive-board","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-zurich"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116242529813755378","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33480","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33480"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33480\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33480"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33480"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33480"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}