Prof. Dr. Robert Grass

Robert Grass (1979, Austrian/Swiss) is Titulary Professor at the Functional Materials Laboratory at ETH Zurich. He studied Chemical Engineering at ETH with a stay at CASE Western Reserve University Cleveland in 2003 after which he pursued a PhD at ETH Zurich. 2021 he spent 6 months at the company Lonza AG to external page assist the manufacturing of vaccines.

Robert Grass is involved in several areas of teaching chemistry, involving courses for small children, high-school chemistry education, process control education of chemical engineers at ETH Zurich. His research encompasses nanomaterial science, surface chemistry and nucleic acid research and has resulted in over 145 research papers, 17 patents and 4 book chapters. Robert Grass is recipient of the external page 2021 European Inventor award.

Research Focus

His research started in the field of surface functionalized nanomaterials, which he commercialised via the ETH Spin-Off company external page TurboBeads GmbH in 2007. These products have been sold to more than 1000 different customers, are available via external page Sigma Aldrich, and have enabled novel commercial bioanalytical tools. The corresponding technology is also at the core of the ETH Spin-Off company external page hemotune AG, which focuses on the treatment of sepsis.

A second, and more recent part of Grass' work involves the encapsulation of DNA in nanoscopic glass particles, and the use of these particles in the tagging of materials, enabling the integration of a digital signatures into a wide range of products ranging from valuables, external page consumer goods and foodstuff. This technology is currently being commercialised via the ETH Spin-Off Company external page Haelixa GmbH by two of his former PhD students. The company allows raw material tracking throughout the supply chain.

Currently, Robert Grass' Team is working on using DNA as a digital information technology and using this technology for the long-term archiving of digital data as well as the usage of DNA as a technology to integrate digital production information into physical items. A new and growing area of interest of the group is in occupational hygiene and the development of technologies to measure and understand the spread of bacteria and viruses.

Project descriptions.