Next year’s plans

Many knew that I was planning my return to Europe since the beginning of this year. I want to remark again that my move is exclusively motivated by personal reasons; I like the US and especially UIUC and my alma mater IU very much. I applied about a year ago to the Assistant Professor position at ETH and some time after that to the Helmholtz (HGF) Junior Investigator group program with the Juelich Supercomputing Center. Btw., this was the first (and second) time that I applied for something in my
life—I somewhat slid into all other jobs and programs.

Against all odds, both applications succeeded and both offers were extremely close regarding the funding. Now I was facing the paradox of choice (see Schwartz and his talk). This was horrible because I knew that both places invested in me and I had to disappoint somebody. I hate this, seriously.

Juelich is *the* top supercomputing center in Europe and ETH is *the* top research university in (mainland) Europe (with people like Einstein as alumni). It was a very hard choice and I took some time to make it final.

Since my career-goal is to be a professor at a research university, I decided to accept the position at ETH. The environment and colleagues also seem very very promising. I hope my friends in Juelich understand my decision.

So now it’s official. I’ll move to Zuerich, Switzerland (most likely) in August next year to start a position as Assistant Professor at the ETH Zuerich.

A view of Juelich. I like the natural forest setting a lot!

Views of ETH and Zurich.