Director Space Research Initiatives ETH Zurich | Space

This Director position oversees the Project and Innovation Hubs, ensures interdisciplinary collaboration and guides the development of projects and ideas initiated by ETH researchers (or the Innovation Hub) through their lifecycle. This role needs to facilitate smooth transitions between ideas, proposal preparation, mission development, and operations, while promoting synergies across these phases. Additionally, the Director actively engages with ETH researchers to promote space as a strategic research field, encouraging faculty participation in space-related activities. The role also supports the strategic integration of space data applications into ETH research, enabling innovative uses of space data across disciplines. And the Director needs to foster interactions and collaboration between the Innovation and Project Hubs, ensuring coordination, guiding projects into the right of the two hubs, and supporting idea exchange.

Tasks:

• Successfully implements and drives success of the Project and Innovation Hubs
• Continuously evaluates and develops the Project and Innovation Hubs, incl. development of a process to track the success and impact of the two initiatives, and regular evaluation by ETH researchers as well as external stakeholders
• Manages a central pool of space experts (project managers, systems engineers, etc.) including the allocation process of these resources on different space-related projects at ETH (Project Hub) and idea exploration and development, rapid prototyping and validation efforts (Innovation Hub). Most space experts are likely to work on more than one project at a time.
• Sets up and manages space-related administrative support for ETH researchers (e.g. proposal writing, processing invoices, resolving issues)
• Organizes the ETH Zurich internal “marketing” of the Project and Innovation Hubs amongst researchers, professors and labs across different departments
• Fosters collaborations with other academic partners, industrial companies, and agencies – in Switzerland, Europe and worldwide
• Maintains an academic and industry network in Switzerland and beyond, to understand the evolving needs of space-related companies
• Contributes to the fundraising of third-party money for the Project and Innovation Hubs
• Regularly exchanges with similar units at other universities worldwide, to benchmark best practices

Professional experience

• Doctoral degree in a natural science or engineering discipline
• Several years of experience in space-related research and space projects in academia, and/or agency, and/or comparable experience in space-related industry
• Management experience in a complex and larger project or program, e.g. as PI/Co-PI, project manager
• Significant personal experience in space hardware design and construction
• Network to key space players in Europe and across the world (e.g. agencies, academic institutions, industry)

Social and methodological competencies

• Established record of proficient manager and leader
• Record of strong teamwork in diverse teams
• Analytical thinking and fostering innovative approaches
• Very good communication in diverse environments (academia, industry, agencies) and across hierarchies

Technical knowledge and expertise

• Expert-level knowledge and experience in space-related science or engineering
• Excellent spoken and written English is required. Knowledge of German is an asset