Prof. em. Dr. Peter Niederer

Peter Niederer was appointedprofessor in 1987. He was Dean of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering and Dean of the Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering. He retired end of September 2006.

Prof. Niederer was born on May 1, 1941 and received his degree in theoretical physics at the University of Zurich in 1967. He earned his doctorate in 1972 in the Institute of Mechanics at the ETH Zurich under Hans Ziegler. He was a scientific staff member in the newly founded Institute of Biomedical Technology at the University of Zurich and the ETH Zurich. From 1973-1974 he was a research engineer at the Biomedical Department of the General Motors Research Laboratories in Warren, Michigan. He returned to the Institute of Biomedical Engineering as a senior assistant and in the spring of 1980 was a visiting faculty member at the University of Houston, Texas.

His scientific interests lied in the field of biomechanics and medical optics with special emphasis on the biomechanics of the heart and circulatory system as well as trauma biomechanics. In 1980 he received the Götz Prize from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Zurich for his work on the theoretical and experimental simulation of automobile/pedestrian collisions. In the field of medical optics he had a collarboration with industry relating to high-definition endoscopy.