Prof. em. Dr. Louis Schlapbach

Since October 2006, Louis Schlapbach has been Full Professor of Experimental Physics at ETH Zurich (with 20% lectureship).

Louis Schlapbach, born 1944, Swiss, was CEO of EMPA (Swiss Federal Lab for Materials Science and Technology) and until 2006 Full Professor of Physics at the EPF Lausanne.
He graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich in Experimental Physics and got his PhD in Solid State Physics - Magnetism also at ETH Zurich. As a postdoc at a CNRS laboratory in Paris, he studied hydrogen storage in intermetallic compounds. Back at ETHZ, he developed the surface science aspects of the hydrogen interaction with metals and alloys. From 1988 till 2001, Louis Schlapbach was Full Professor for Experimental Physics at the University of Fribourg. As such he built up a research team of 20-25 people working on the topic -New Materials and their Surfaces- resulting in about 40 PhD, 200 scientific papers and some patents. A strong collaboration with industry was established.

Since spring 2001, he has been CEO of EMPA, the materials science and technology institution of the ETH domain with 750 scientists and technical and administrative employees in Duebendorf-Zurich, St. Gallen and Thun. His research interests concern mainly nanoscopic properties of new materials and surfaces, hydrogen interaction with solids, functional surfaces and coatings, materials for energy technology.

Louis Schlapbach was member of the Swiss National Science Foundation since 1997 thru 2004.