ZAGREB, July 9, 2019 – On the second day of her visit to Switzerland, Croatian President Kolinda Grabar-Kitarović on Tuesday visited the ETH Zurich Technological University and laid wreaths at a plaque dedicated to two Croatian Nobel Prize winners, Vladimir Prelog and Lavoslav Ružička, and then met with Croatian students and researchers at that institution.
ETH Vice President for Research and Corporate Relations Prof. Detlef Guenther accompanied Grabar-Kitarović during the wreath laying ceremony.
Ružička won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1939 and today ETH has an award named after Ružička. Prelog was the Nobel Prize laureate in Chemistry in 1975.
ETH is an institution that boasts 21 Nobel Prize winners and currently there are about seventy students studying there.
The president then met with Croatian students at the university. Two Croatian professors and researchers, Nenad Ban and Srđan Čapkun, gave lectures and spoke about their work and education.
Čapkun presented a paper on security systems, while Ban spoke about his research into ribosomes and how he came to Zurich and, he said, one of the best universities in the world, adding that Zurich was similar to Zagreb as a central European city.
The president underscored that Croatia has huge scientific potential which needs to be worked on from the earliest age. She said that it is necessary to fight against nepotism and corruption in Croatian science and to promote the reform in the education system.
She called on Croatian students to return to the homeland because they are “particularly needed.”
Later the president will hold a lecture at the Europa Institute of the University of Zurich on the topic “Europe – challenges in an increasingly complex world”. She will conclude her visit by meeting with representatives of the Swiss business sector and the Chamber of Commerce Switzerland – Central Europe.
More news about relations between Croatia and Switzerland can be found in the Politics section.
