Student Projects
Student projects at IFD are usually closely related to current research projects and are supervised by our doctoral students, lecturers and professors. Some projects are conducted in collaboration with academic and industrial partners.
The Process
At IFD we try to assign the projects according to the students' preferences. To make sure that you get the project of your choice, it is best to contact us as soon as possible and preferably a few weeks before the semester starts. For a list of available projects, see the list below.
On the first Friday of each semester, IFD organizes an information event for students who are starting a project at IFD. The event is a great opportunity to meet other students, IFD faculty members, and supervisors. Moreover, detailed information about how student projects are conducted at IFD is given (Download student project guidelines (PDF, 3.3 MB)). Specifics about the event are provided by student supervisors.
Presentations of Bachelor, semester and CSE seminar thesis projects usually take place during the last week of the semester in the room ML H 51 ("Treibhaus"). Master thesis presentation dates are setup individually depending on the corresponding starting dates. Selected posters of projects are showcased on the H-floor of the ML building (poster templates for Download LaTeX (ZIP, 551 KB) and Download MS Word (DOCX, 353 KB) are available).
3D image reconstruction of vibrating drops and bubbles
Vibrating drops and bubbles are omnipresent in several applications such as food and drug encapsulation, fertilizer spray formation, and powder-bed metallurgy. Analyzing these complex flow processes experimentally is tricky due to their multiphase nature and the small spatiotemporal scales involved. To counter these issues, we have performed experiments on vibrating drops and bubbles using a novel multi-projection imaging technique coupled with x-ray phase-contrast imaging. This provides multiple different views of the same process, and combining these images together could provide three-dimensional information on the processes. The goal of this project is for the student to develop an image processing, triangulation and physics-informed decision-making protocol to fully reconstruct the three-dimensional process imaged. This protocol could then be used to interpret the flow-fields involved in drop vibrations, and therefore, could be used to predict daughter-droplet size distributions and other vital information related to the process.
Keywords
X-ray multi-projection imaging, drop and bubble vibration, image reconstruction
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis
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Published since: 2026-02-05 , Earliest start: 2026-02-15 , Latest end: 2026-05-31
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Group Supponen
Hosts Anunay Anunay
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology
Investigation of tomographic kidney stone data
Shock wave lithotripsy (SWL) is a non-invasive acoustic treatment used to fragment kidney stones. Micro-computed tomography, which is a form of X-ray imaging enabling three-dimensional reconstruction of a sample space, offers spatial mapping of fracture patterns throughout the stone resulting from treatment. Such damage features arise because of the incident shock-stone surface interactions and from cavitation activity encompassing the stone. Classifying each individual pixel of the reconstructed volume (semantic segmentation), into the corresponding material phases (i.e. stone, water, air) visualizes the development of damage features and opens methods for quantifying the incurred damage.
Keywords
X-ray tomography, shock wave lithotripsy, cavitation, image analysis, kidney stone
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Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2026-01-31 , Earliest start: 2026-02-16 , Latest end: 2026-08-28
Organization Group Supponen
Hosts Brewer Cameron
Topics Engineering and Technology
Pressure wave-driven antibubble dynamics for drug delivery to endothelial cells
The blood–brain barrier (BBB) represents a major obstacle for drug delivery to the central nervous system, as it consists of a highly selective membrane of tightly sealed endothelial cells. Ultrasound-mediated delivery using microbubbles has shown promising results for transient and localized BBB opening. Antibubbles, which are a class of acoustically active agents consisting of one or more liquid payload cores, has been shown to offer new opportunities for drug encapsulation and controlled release near endothelial cells, potentially improving delivery efficiency while reducing systemic exposure. Depending on excitation parameters and antibubble properties, acoustically-driven antibubbles show rich dynamics, which are believed to generate localized mechanical stresses capable of increasing cell membrane permeability. The varied dynamics also leads to different payload release regimes, including partial or complete release, facilitating intracellular drug transport. In this project, the student will investigate antibubble-mediated drug delivery using pressure waves generated by a commercial ultrasound research system and/or focused shock-wave sources (e.g. lithotripter-type pulses). Experiments will be performed in BBB-on-a-chip systems consisting of human cerebral endothelial cells grown on optically and acoustically transparent substrates, and the dynamics will be characterized by high-speed bright-field imaging and fluorescence microscopy. The overall objective is to establish quantitative links between pressure-wave parameters, antibubble dynamics, and biological delivery outcomes, providing mechanistic insight into antibubble-assisted BBB opening for drug delivery.
Keywords
Antibubbles, blood-brain barrier opening (BBB), High-speed and fluorescence imaging
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Semester Project
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Published since: 2026-01-27 , Earliest start: 2026-02-15 , Latest end: 2026-05-31
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Group Supponen
Hosts Anunay Anunay
Topics Engineering and Technology , Biology
Experimental Visualization of Phase Shift in Focused Ultrasound
Keywords
Ultrasound, Phase Shift, Ultrasound Transducers, Acoustics, Wave Physics
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Semester Project , Internship , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2026-01-13 , Earliest start: 2025-09-30 , Latest end: 2026-09-30
Organization Group Supponen
Hosts Fiorini Samuele
Topics Mathematical Sciences , Engineering and Technology , Physics
Subharmonic emissions from acoustically-coupled microbubble clouds
In the medical context, coated microbubbles have the potential to measure the cardiac pressure noninvasively by means of subharmonic emissions. In this study, we aim to study the influence of acoustic coupling between neighboring microbubbles in the amplitude of the subharmonic emissions.
Keywords
Microbubble dynamics, numerical, subharmonic, pressure estimation.
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-12-19 , Earliest start: 2026-01-05
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Group Supponen
Hosts Collado Gonzalo
Topics Engineering and Technology , Physics
Numerical investigations of the nonlinear coupling between the shape modes and volumetric oscillations of microbubbles
Microbubble dynamics are rich and complex. When they are excited with an ultrasound wave, these can undergo spherical and non-spherical oscillations. Experimental results suggest that non-spherical shape modes can couple with the spherical oscillation, leading to some unexpected behaviors. In this project we aim to numerically investigate this phenomenon.
Keywords
Microbubble, dynamics, partial differential equations, numerical
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-12-19 , Earliest start: 2026-01-05
Applications limited to ETH Zurich
Organization Group Supponen
Hosts Collado Gonzalo
Topics Mathematical Sciences , Engineering and Technology , Physics
Propagation-Based Phase-Contrast Imaging with Cold Neutrons: Towards Tomographic Imaging of Weakly Absorbing Metallic Objects
Neutron imaging provides unique opportunity for studying technologically and biologically relevant materials as a complementary modality to other techniques. The increased interest in neutron imaging relies on their strong penetration into metallic materials, their sensitivity to light elements, and the possibility of manipulating contrast via isotope substitution. Among the imaging approaches, propagation based phase-contrast imaging recently showed a promising extension to conventional absorption transmission imaging. This method, well established with synchrotron X-ray radiation, relies on a (partially) coherent beam and carefully controlled experimental conditions to convert phase variations of the incoming wavefront into quantitative measurements. Note that this opportunity is for the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble, France.
Keywords
phase-contrast imaging; synchrotron radiation; imaging techniques
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Internship
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Published since: 2025-12-12 , Earliest start: 2026-01-01 , Latest end: 2026-12-31
Organization Group Supponen
Hosts Brewer Cameron
Topics Engineering and Technology
Snow Saltation Measurements in the Field
Saltating snow is an important phenomenon of mass transport over the snow cover, impacting various processes governing the snowpack evolution. Key to the accurate modelling of snow saltation is the mass flux of snow and shear distribution under drifting and blowing snow conditions. This project will consider field measurements of snow saltation outdoors in the Swiss Alps. The student will build and reproduce an existing snow saltation tracking system using available camera equipment and collocate measurements with a new outdoor holography setup to perform airborne particle characterization. This will acquire novel field data to study mechanisms of snow saltation coupled to sublimation in the near-ground surface layer.
Keywords
Snow Saltation, Drifting and Blowing Snow, Sublimation, Holography, Particle Tracking, Field Measurements
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Semester Project , Internship , Bachelor Thesis , Master Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-11-25 , Earliest start: 2025-08-08 , Latest end: 2026-05-31
Applications limited to ETH Zurich , EPFL - Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Organization Group Coletti
Hosts Muller Koen , Coletti Filippo
Topics Information, Computing and Communication Sciences , Engineering and Technology , Earth Sciences , Physics
Shape oscillations of bubbles on an oscillating surface
When a microbubble resting on a surface is excited around its resonance frequency, the bubble exhibits intense shape deformations. This project aims at designing an experimental setup to capture the surface instabilities of accelerated bubbles.
Keywords
Fluid dynamics, bubbles, instability
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Semester Project , Bachelor Thesis , ETH Zurich (ETHZ)
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Published since: 2025-11-06 , Earliest start: 2026-01-01 , Latest end: 2026-06-30
Applications limited to Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering
Organization Group Supponen
Hosts Presse Louan
Topics Engineering and Technology