“Teaching the subject is how I really learned it”

Who says scientists don’t believe in luck? “Just about everything that happens in life is down to chance,” says Stefano Mischler, who was named best teacher in the materials science and engineering section for 2023. His career is a perfect example of this: “As I finished up high school, I knew I wanted to study either history or chemistry in college,” he says. “Perhaps I had a slight preference for chemistry, given the allure of a better salary! Then one day, a materials scientist came to my high school and spoke about his field – I found it utterly fascinating.” Mischler ultimately chose materials science as his major when he enrolled at ETH Zurich.

Lady luck had more in store for him. “Shortly before I graduated with my master’s degree, one of my professors told me about the surface analysis work being done at EPFL,” he says. “I decided it was worth checking out.” Master’s in hand, Mischler took the train to Lausanne and knocked on the door of EPFL’s surface analysis expert, Prof. Dieter Landolt. Mischler went on to complete his PhD under Prof. Landolt’s supervision. He then carried out a postdoc at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment in Oxfordshire, before returning to Switzerland, “convinced I’d get a job in industry.” But instead, Prof. Landolt offered him a second postdoc opportunity – in the field of tribology. “My immediate reply was ‘tribolo-what?’” says Mischler. But he accepted the challenge, again with the idea of getting a job with a company a couple of years later.

Fast forward more than 30 years and Mischler is still at EPFL, where he heads the Tribology and Interfacial Chemistry (TIC) research group. Tribolo-what? Mischler explains: “Tribology is the study of friction, lubrication and wear between interacting surfaces in relative motion.” It sits at the crossroads of several disciplines and “really started to take off around 30 years ago.” To the point where the Vaud innovation commission, now InnoSuisse, awarded the TIC group (then part of Prof. Landolt’s laboratory) a CHF 2 million grant for tribology research. This amount of funding was big enough to require approval by the Federal Council. “The Swiss government is probably the only one in the world that knows what tribology is!” jokes Mischler. He adds that companies in many industries, particularly watchmaking and biomedicine, have taken an interest in this field.

Big-picture view

There’s no shortcut to teaching the wonders of tribology to the young men and women who take Mischler’s classes at EPFL. “This field draws on elaborate methods that you have to go through step by step without getting discouraged,” he says. Despite this delicate balancing act, he feels privileged to have been able to impart his knowledge for over three decades. “Teaching the subject is how I really learned it,” he says. “Tribology is fairly easy to explain to your grandmother, but much harder to students!”

How is it that teaching gave Mischler a better grasp of tribology and, consequently, made him a better researcher? “You have to have a big-picture view of a subject to be able to teach it, which in turn forces you to look at developments in the field over the longer term,” he says. Looking specifically at tribology, he gives the example of lubricants: “They were first developed in the 18thcentury when oil was used to lubricate steel parts. But an engineer studying lubricants today – such as how water can improve the lubrication of polymers – approaches it with a completely different mindset and probably wouldn’t even consider oil. As teachers, however, we have to keep both compounds in mind – oil and water – in order to give students a complete toolkit they can use throughout their lives.”

Mischler hasn’t really changed his approach to teaching over the past 30 years. “The material is pretty much the same. I almost find that a little frustrating, but students seem to like my classes,” he says. “When we introduced master’s classes in tribology, I decided to make them more interactive, asking students lots of questions and encouraging them to challenge what I say. I also try to link what we study to practical applications.” Mischler feels it’s important to prepare students for jobs in the real world. “I regularly ask former tribology students who now work in watchmaking, biomedical implants or transportation systems, for example, to speak to my students about how important a solid grounding in the theory was in their careers,” he says.

Seizing opportunities

Is having a good grasp of the theory also an advantage at the end of one’s career? Mischler will be able to answer that in a few years, as he plans to retire in 2025. But he’s got plenty to keep him busy in the meantime, like “setting up a school of tribology at EPFL!” he jokes. “I haven’t yet figured out what I want to do when I retire. I’m not very good at planning ahead.” Yet he’s not worried about how he’ll spend his time. “Like I said before, I’m a big believer in chance. I’d even say that luck has good things in store for us – provided you know how to seize opportunities when they arise.”