Dr. rer. nat. Urs Ruth

Please tell us what fascinates you most about research.

What I love about research is that you are asked to be curious. Knowledge is very important, too, of course; but the most important thing in science and research is to be curious! When you see something new and your reaction is “Ah, I know why that happens …” then you are certainly smart and knowledgeable. But when you see something new and your reaction is “Oh, that’s weird! Why does that happen?” … then you know you are a researcher.

What makes research done at Bosch so special?

The interdisciplinary nature of the Bosch Research campus is amazing: engineers, physicists, chemists, biologists, computer scientists and many other fields of expertise are represented at one location. This is extremely exciting. Another aspect is personal responsibility. Researchers do their best work when they are intrinsically motivated and can give free rein to their creativity. Of course, our applied corporate research differs from publicly funded basic research. But that is what makes it so attractive: Many of the innovations from our research later end up in our products.

What research topics are you currently working on at Bosch?

Climate change, the energy transition and other topics such as pollution and atmospheric chemistry are a broad field of expertise. To be honest, there is little research that I still do myself. But I review all these topics with the goal of getting as close as possible to the scientific core. This includes topics such as the physical causes of climate change, projections of future climate and sustainable future scenarios. Another important topic are public and political trends regarding climate action. It is very important for us to understand all of these issues and to draw the proper conclusions for ourselves as a company and for our products.

What are the biggest scientific challenges in your field of research?

If you consider scenarios without greenhouse gas emissions, there are two solution archetypes: One is to stop using energy, i.e. to maximize energy sufficiency and efficiency. But “the people” will not like the changes in lifestyle that go along with this, so this solution will not work. The other solution archetype is to provide all the energy we want in a sustainable and renewable way. However, it would take a long time to establish this and it would be prohibitively expensive. The challenge now is to find all the viable solutions between these two extremes and to do so quickly enough that we stay within the boundaries of a +1.5°C or at least well below +2°C warming limit. – This answer may be a bit abstract, but it describes the core of the challenge in my opinion.

How do the results of your research become part of solutions "Invented for life"?

Many of our products today have a considerable fossil footprint. Think of diesel and gasoline power trains in the automotive sector or gas-fired heating equipment for buildings and industry. To address this, we are working in many different ways to transform our product portfolio. For example, this includes the development of battery or fuel-cell electric drives, and electric and hydrogen-based heating systems. But it also covers the development of processes for assessing the environmental impact of products throughout their lifecyle, advanced recycling concepts and eco-engineering strategies.