Joël Mesot

Joël Mesot has been President of ETH Zurich since 2019. He grew up in Geneva, then studied physics at ETH Zurich, where he obtained his doctorate in 1992 with a thesis on high-temperature superconductors. After a research stay at the Institut Laue-Langevin (France), he continued his scientific career at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) and Argonne National Laboratory (USA) where he worked on quantum materials. In 2004, he became head of the neutron scattering laboratory at PSI.

In 2008, he was promoted to Director of the PSI – the largest public research institute in Switzerland – and appointed full Professor of Physics at ETH Zurich. For his scientific work Mesot received in 1995 the IBM Prize from the Swiss Physical Society and in 2002 the Latsis Prize for ETH Zurich. He is a member of national and international advisory boards, including the Board of Trustees of the Swiss Innovation Park and the Governing Board of CREATE (Singapore). In his current role, he assumes overall political and legal responsibility for ETH Zurich with its 520 professors and 25’000 students.