Auke IjspeertAuke Ijspeert is a full professor at the EPFL, and head of the Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob). He has a B.Sc./M.Sc. in physics from the EPFL (1995), and a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh (1999). He carried out postdocs at IDSIA and EPFL, and at the University of Southern California (USC). He then became a research assistant professor at USC, and an external collaborator at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research institute) in Japan. In 2002, he came back to the EPFL as an SNF assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in October 2009 and to full professor in April 2016. His primary affiliation is with the Institute of Bioengineering, and secondary affiliation with the Institute of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests are at the intersection between robotics, computational neuroscience, nonlinear dynamical systems, and machine learning. He is interested in using numerical simulations and robots to get a better understanding of sensorimotor coordination in animals, and in using inspiration from biology to design novel types of robots and adaptive controllers. (see for instance Ijspeert et al Science 2007, Ijspeert Science 2014, and Nyakatura et al Nature 2019). He is also investigating how to assist people with limited mobility using exoskeletons and assistive furniture. He is regularly invited to give talks on these topics (e.g. TED talk given at TED Global Geneva, Dec 8 2015). With his colleagues, he has received paper awards at ICRA2002, CLAWAR2005, IEEE Humanoids 2007, IEEE ROMAN 2014, CLAWAR 2015, SAB2018, and CLAWAR 2019. He is an IEEE Fellow, member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science magazine, and associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics and for the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics. He has acted as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (2009-2013) and for Soft Robotics (2018-2021). He was a guest editor for the Proceedings of IEEE, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Autonomous Robots, IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, and Biological Cybernetics. He has been the organizer of 7 international conferences (BioADIT2004, SAB2004, AMAM2005, BioADIT2006, LATSIS2006, SSRR2016, AMAM2019), and a program committee member of over 50 conferences.
Christian Ludwig2005 - today: Adjunct Professor at EPFL in the field of Solid Waste Treatment and head of the Chemical Processes and Materials research group (CPM) at Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI). Joint EPFL-PSI Professorship on Solid Waste Treatment. 2000 - today: Head, Group of Chemical Processes and Materials (CPM) at Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI). In 2009 the LEM unit was closed and the CPM group is now affiliated to the Bioenergy and Catalysis Laboratory (LBK) of the Energy and Environment Research Division (ENE). Since June 2002 permanent position ("tenure"). 1997 - 1999: Senior Scientist. Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI), General Energy Research Department, Element Cycles Section. 1995 - 1997: Research Fellow. Swiss Federal Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (EAWAG), Department of Resource and Waste Management. 1993 - 1995: Post-doc Fellow. University of California Davis, Department of Land, Air, and Water Resources (LAWR). 1990 - 1993: PhD Student. University of Berne, Department of Inorganic, Analytical, and Physical Chemistry. 1989 - 1990: Master Student. University of Berne, Department of Inorganic, Analytical, and Physical Chemistry.
Hans Björn PüttgenHans B. (Teddy)Pűttgen holds the Chaire de Gestion des Systèmes Energétiques (Energy Systems Management Chair) at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne - EPFL - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. Upon his arrival at EPFL, in April 2006, he also became the inaugural Director of the Energy Center at EPFL.
The Energy Center is a university-wide and cross-disciplinary organization with the responsibility of coordinating all R&D activities on campus related to energy. EPFL has a very broad energy portfolio located within major laboratories in all five major Facultés (Schools), ranging, for example, from electric power production, distribution and end use to controlled fusion, from hydropower generation to photovoltaics, from building technologies to thermal turbo-machinery. The Energy Center also aims to incorporate R&D activities related to economics of energy and public policy.
Before arriving at EPFL, Professor Püttgen was Georgia Power Professor and Vice Chair for External Affairs in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. At Georgia Tech, he launched the National Electric Energy Test, Research and Application Center, NEETRAC, and served as its Director and Management Board Chair. NEETRAC is a membership driven organization focusing on research and test projects in the field of electric power delivery systems and apparatus. NEETRAC, with an annual budget in excess of five million USD, has over 30 corporate members among major US electric utilities and equipment manufacturers.
Since December 2006 Teddy Püttgen is Georgia Power Professor Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Until his arrival at EPFL, Teddy Pűttgen served as Président and CEO of Georgia Tech Lorraine, the European campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology located in Metz, France. Created in 1990, Georgia Tech Lorraine has become the model for cooperation between American and European universities regarding undergraduate and graduate engineering education as well as leading-edge research.
Teddy Pűttgen, who is a Senior Member of PES, served as President of the Power Engineering Society of IEEE in 2004 and 2005 and is a member of the Governing Board and the Executive Committee. He is a recipient of the IEEE third millennium medal.
He graduated from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne with the Ingénieur Diplômé degree in Electrical Engineering. He holds graduate degrees in Business Administration and Management from the University of Lausanne. His PhD, in Electrical Engineering with an emphasis in electric power, is from the University of Florida.
He is a past recipient of the IEEE Award for Outstanding Faculty Advisor and of the ASEE DOW Outstanding Young Faculty award. He is a member of the Sigma Xi, Phi Kappa Phi, Tau Pi Beta and Eta Kappa Nu honor societies.
John Richard ThomeJohn R. Thome is Professor of Heat and Mass Transfer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland since 1998, where his primary interests of research are two-phase flow and heat transfer, covering both macro-scale and micro-scale heat transfer and enhanced heat transfer. He directs the Laboratory of Heat and Mass Transfer (LTCM) at the EPFL with a research staff of about 18-20 and is also Director of the Doctoral School in Energy. He received his Ph.D. at Oxford University, England in 1978. He is the author of four books: Enhanced Boiling Heat Transfer (1990), Convective Boiling and Condensation, 3rd Edition (1994), Wolverine Engineering Databook III (2004) and Nucleate Boiling on Micro-Structured Surfaces (2008). He received the ASME Heat Transfer Division's Best Paper Award in 1998 for a 3-part paper on two-phase flow and flow boiling heat transfer published in the Journal of Heat Transfer. He has received the J&E Hall Gold Medal from the U.K. Institute of Refrigeration in February, 2008 for his extensive research contributions on refrigeration heat transfer and more recently the 2010 ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award. He has published widely on the fundamental aspects of microscale and macroscale two-phase flow and heat transfer and on enhanced boiling and condensation heat transfer.
