Group Head

Group Head

Patrick Rühs is an Assistant Professor (Tenure Track) of Food Structure Engineering and a member of the Institute of Food, Nutrition and Health in the D-HEST. He received his MSc and PhD in Food Science from ETH Zürich on the topic of interfacial rheology of biofilms and amyloid fibrils. He then joined the laboratory of Prof. André Studart for a Post Doc in material science, where he worked on 3D printing of functional living materials. He further broadened his training in bioengineering in the laboratory of Prof. Phillipp Messersmith at UC Berkeley by investigating the forced adhesion of microbes via dopamine.

In 2020 Patrick Rühs joined Planted Foods as the Head of Science where he invented new food structuring technologies to produce plant-based meat. The patented technologies have enabled Planted to produce healthy and additive-free plant-based meat products that can now be found in european and swiss supermarkets.

Since May 2024 Patrick Rühs serves as an assistant professor at ETH Zürich to investigate microbe-material-processing relationships and nature-inspired food processing to produce healthy food with easy-to-scale industrial processes. Patrick Rühs is passionate about soft living materials and food structuring techniques and he aims to transform industrial food processes to produce healthier food products.