Johan AuwerxJohan Auwerx is Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he occupies the Nestle Chair in Energy Metabolism. Dr. Auwerx has been using molecular physiology and systems genetics to understand metabolism in health, aging and disease. Much of his work focused on understanding how diet, exercise and hormones control metabolism through changing the expression of genes by altering the activity of transcription factors and their associated cofactors. His work was instrumental for the development of agonists of nuclear receptors - a particular class of transcription factors - into drugs, which now are used to treat high blood lipid levels, fatty liver, and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Auwerx was amongst the first to recognize that transcriptional cofactors, which fine-tune the activity of transcription factors, act as energy sensors/effectors that influence metabolic homeostasis. His research validated these cofactors as novel targets to treat metabolic diseases, and spurred the clinical use of natural compounds, such as resveratrol, as modulators of these cofactor pathways.
Johan Auwerx was elected as a member of EMBO in 2003 and is the recipient of a dozen of international scientific prizes, including the Danone International Nutrition Award, the Oskar Minkowski Prize, and the Morgagni Gold Medal. His work is highly cited by his peers with a h-factor of over 100. He is an editorial board member of several journals, including Cell Metabolism, Molecular Systems Biology, The EMBO Journal, Journal of Cell Biology, Cell, and Science. Dr. Auwerx co-founded a handful of biotech companies, including Carex, PhytoDia, and most recently Mitobridge, and has served on several scientific advisory boards.
Dr. Auwerx received both his MD and PhD in Molecular Endocrinology at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium. He was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Nava SetterNava Setter completed MSc in Civil Engineering in the Technion (Israel) and PhD in Solid State Science in Penn. State University (USA) (1980). After post-doctoral work at the Universities of Oxford (UK) and Geneva (Switzerland), she joined an R&D institute in Haifa (Israel) where she became the head of the Electronic Ceramics Lab (1988). She began her affiliation with EPFL in 1989 as the Director of the Ceramics Laboratory, becoming Full Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in 1992. She had been Head of the Materials Department in the past and more recently has served as the Director of the Doctoral School for Materials.
Research at the Ceramics Laboratory, which Nava Setter directs, concerns the science and technology of functional ceramics focusing on piezoelectric and related materials: ferroelectrics, dielectrics, pyroelectrics and also ferromagnetics. The work includes fundamental and applied research and covers the various scales from the atoms to the final devices. Emphasis is given to micro- and nano-fabrication technology with ceramics and coupled theoretical and experimental studies of the functioning of ferroelectrics.
Her own research interests include ferroelectrics and piezoelectrics: in particular the effects of interfaces, finite-size and domain-wall phenomena, as well as structure-property relations and the pursuit of new applications. The leading thread in her work over the years has been the demonstration of how basic or fundamental concepts in materials - particularly ferroelectrics - can be utilized in a new way and/or in new types of devices. She has published over 450 scientific and technical papers.
Nava Setter is a Fellow of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and the World Academy of Ceramics. Among the awards she received are the Swiss-Korea Research Award, the ISIF outstanding achievement award, and the Ferroelectrics-IEEE recognition award. In 2010 her research was recognized by the European Union by the award of an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant. Recently she received the IEEE-UFFC Achievement Award (2011),the W.R. Buessem Award(2011), the Robert S. Sosman Award Lecture (American Ceramics Society) (2013), and the American Vacuum Society Recognition for Excellence in Leadership (2013).
Mirjana StojilovicMirjana Stojilović received the Dipl. Ing. and Ph.D. degrees from the School of Electrical Engineering, University of Belgrade, in 2006 and 2013, respectively. From 2010 to 2013, she was collaborating with the Processor Architecture Laboratory at EPFL, visiting periodically as a Guest Researcher. From 2013 to 2016, she was working at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland as a senior researcher, and at EPFL as a lecturer. She joined Parallel Systems Architecture Lab at EPFL in October 2016. Mirjana's main research interests include electronic design automation, reconfigurable computing, electromagnetic-compatibility and signal-integrity issues, and hardware security. Mirjana Stojilović serves on the program committee of the FPGA, FPL, and FCCM conferences and as a reviewer for IEEE TCAD, TVLSI, TC, TEMC, IEEE Access and ACM TRETS. She received the Best Paper Award at 2016 International Symposium on Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC Europe 2016), Young Scientist Award at 33rd International Conference on Lightning Protection (ICLP2016), and the Young Author Best Paper Award at the 20th Telecommunication Forum in Belgrade (TELFOR 2012). In 2015, the EPFL School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) presented her with the Teaching Award.
Giulia TagliabueDr. Giulia Tagliabue is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Mechanical Engineering (IGM). She obtained her B.S. and M.S degrees cum laude in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Udine in Italy. Concurrently she also obtained the diploma from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Udine. In 2015 she obtained her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich with a thesis on nanophotonic design for light-to-heat and light-to-charge conversion devices. In 2015 Dr. Tagliabue was awarded the Early Mobility Fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation and moved to Caltech as a PostDoctoral fellow. In 2017, thanks to the award of an Advanced Mobility Fellowship, she prolonged her stay at Caltech. Here, in collaboration with the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) she investigated coupled light, heat and charge transfer processes in nanophotonic structures and low-dimensional materials for photoelectrochemical and photovoltaic sustainable energy conversion.
Mathias Josef PayerMathias Payer is a security researcher and professor at the EPFL school of computer and communication sciences (IC), leading the HexHive group. His research focuses on protecting applications in the presence of vulnerabilities, with a focus on memory corruption and type violations. He is interested in software security, system security, binary exploitation, effective mitigations, fault isolation/privilege separation, strong sanitization, and software testing (fuzzing) using a combination of binary analysis and compiler-based techniques. More details are available in his CV.
Mohamed BouriDr. Mohamed Bouri is a group leader of Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics in LSRO and lecturer of Robotics and Industrial Robotics. He graduated in Electrical Engineering in 1992 and obtained his PhD degree in 1997 in Industrial Automation at INSA LYON, France. Since 1997, he is at EPFL and is mainly active in the field of robot control, automation and robot design for medical and industrial applications. He is the head of Rehabilitation and Assistive Robotics group since 2005 and has strong references with the development of robotic devices for lower limb rehabilitation : The MotionMaker and WalkTrainer commercialzed by the company Swortec. His ongoing research currently focuses on the development of exoskeletons and the associated control strategies. His main current projects are TWIICE, a lower limb exoskeleton for people with paraplegia, AUTONOMYO, a walk assistance exoskeleton for people with muscle weakness, and the HiBSO, a hip orthosis for elderly.
