Prof. Dame Sarah Springman DBE FREng is an academic, engineer and sports leader. Her career combines high performance with the experience of shaping complex institutions and navigating competing interests across borders.
Springman has been Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at ETH Zurich since 1997 and became its Rector in 2015 – only the second woman to hold the post since the university's founding in 1855. She is now Principal of St Hilda's College at the University of Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and a Commissioner for the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851.
As an elite triathlete, she represented Great Britain from 1984 to 1993 and won more than twenty European elite medals. As Vice-President of the International Triathlon Union, she helped establish triathlon as an Olympic sport before becoming the inaugural President of the British Triathlon Federation. She has also served on the International Olympic Committee's Sustainability and Legacy Commission.
At the European Economic Forum, her keynote 'Committed Criticism' sets out where Europe stands in its own way – and who has to take responsibility for putting it right.
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