Dominique Foray1 - Current occupations and activities I am Full Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and hold the Chair of Economics and Management of Innovation (CEMI). I am a member of the Swiss Council for Science (SWR); chairman of the Advisory Board of the Swiss Economic Research Institute (KOF); and a foreign member of the Center of Capitalism and Society (Columbia University, New York). From 2007 to 2015, I served as a member of the Swiss National Research Council (Division IV - Large Scale Programs) From 2013 to 2016, I was a member of the Expert Commission for Research and Innovation of Germany (E-FI) and a member of the Expert Group for the National Report on Research and Innovation (SBFI, Switzerland). From 2008 to 2011, I served as chairman of the expert group Knowledge for Growth; a group of prominent economists created to advise Commissioner J. Potocnik (European Commission, DG research). This is during this service as member of this Group that I developed the concept of smart specialisation (together with P.A.David and B.Hall) that is now a key policy mechanism of the EU (cohesion policy). My expertise includes the economics of innovation and knowledge and the economic policy implications of the new knowledge-based economy. I have presented many opening speeches and key note address in academic and policy conferences on these topics. I have written numerous academic papers as well as two books and have edited several books and special issues in these fields. Among these books,I like to highlight : Technology and the Wealth of Nations (Pinter, 1992) ed.with C.Freeman; Unemployment and Growth in the Knowledge-based Economy (OECD, 1996), ed. with B.A.Lundvall; Knowledge economies and societies (a special issue of the International Social Science Journal, Basil Blackwell, 2002, with editions in French, Spanish, Chinese, Arabs, Russian); The Economics of knowledge (MIT press, 2004, paperback in 2006) with editions in France, Italy, Korea, China, Greece, Syria and Algeria The New Economics of Technology Policy(Edward Elgar)2009, ed.; . Smart specialisation : opportunities and challenges for regional innovation policy(Routledge, 2015) Since 2017, I regularly contribute to the Swiss Science Council blog: https://blog.wissenschaftsrat.ch/ 2 Education, previous appointments and academic positions - I received my Ph.D. in economics in 1984 and my "habilitation à diriger des recherches" in 1992 from the University Lumière of Lyon. - In 1985, I joined the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) as a Research Fellow in economics. - In 1990, I joined the Ecole Centrale de Paris as professor of economics, and taught in the program ingénieur économiste. - In 1993, I was nominated as Research Director at CNRS and joined the Institut pour le Management de la Recherche et de l'Innovation (IMRI) of the University of Paris-Dauphine. - In 2001-2004, I worked as a Principal Analyst at the Center for Education, Research and Innovation of OECD (Paris). - I joined the EPFL as Professeur Ordinaire in 2004. 3 - Honours and awards Best young economist award - City of Lyon (France)1986 Outstanding research in 1995 (médaille du CNRS)(France) Futuris award in 2012 for his work on smart specialisation Best paper award, EJIM, 2014 Doctor Honoris Causa, University of Cluj Napoca, 2017 I was also elected as Research Fellow at ICER (International Center for Economic Research) in Turin, at the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and at IIASA in Laxenburg; and I was Invited Professor at the Universities of Santiago de Compostela, Torino and Padova. 4 - Consulting activities I have done consulting work for the UNESCO, the OECD, WIPO, UNCTAD, UN/ECE, the European Commission, the Swiss Government and other public organisations. I am currently strongly involved into the "smart specialisation" debate in Europe, giving talks and providing advices in many countries and regions in Europe. Daniel ThalmannProf. Daniel Thalmann is Honorary Professor at EPFL and Director of Research development at MIRALab Sarl. He has been Visiting Professor at The Institute for Media Innovation (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) from 2009 to 2017. He is a pioneer in research on Virtual Humans. His current research interests include Real-time Virtual Humans in Virtual Reality, crowd simulation, and 3D Interaction. Daniel Thalmann has been the Founder of The Virtual Reality Lab (VRlab) at EPFL, Switzerland, Professor at The University of Montreal and Visiting Professor/ Researcher at CERN, University of Nebraska, University of Tokyo, and National University of Singapore. Until October 2010, he was the President of the Swiss Association of Research in Information Technology and one Director of the European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). He is coeditor-in-chief of the Journal of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, and member of the editorial board of 6 other journals. Daniel Thalmann was member of numerous Program Committees, Program Chair and CoChair of several conferences including IEEE VR, ACM VRST, and ACM VRCAI. Daniel Thalmann has published more than 500 papers in Graphics, Animation, and Virtual Reality. He is coeditor of 30 books, and coauthor of several books including 'Crowd Simulation' (second edition 2012) and 'Stepping Into Virtual Reality' (2007), published by Springer. He received his PhD in Computer Science in 1977 from the University of Geneva and an Honorary Doctorate (Honoris Causa) from University Paul- Sabatier in Toulouse, France, in 2003. He also received the Eurographics Distinguished Career Award in 2010 and the 2012 Canadian Human Computer Communications Society Achievement Award. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Thalmann André SchiperAndré Schiper graduated in Physics from the ETHZ in Zurich in 1973 and received the PhD degree in Computer Science from EPFL in 1980. He has been a professor of computer science at EPFL since 1985, leading the Distributed Systems Laboratory. During the academic year 1992-1993 he was on sabbatical leave at the University of Cornell, Ithaca, New York (working with Ken Birman and Aleta Ricciardi), and in 2004-2005 at the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France (working with Bernadette Charron-Bost). His research interests are in the area of dependable distributed systems, middleware support for dependable systems, replication techniques (including for database systems), group communication, distributed transactions, and MANETs (mobile ad-hoc networks).
Prof. Schiper is member of the editorial boards of
Distributed Computing (DC), Springer Verlag - ACM,
Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), IEEE,
International Journal of Security and Networks (Inderscience).
Helena KovacsHelena is a social scientist with an appetite for a wide variety of topics related to education. Her current work focuses on exploring changes in teaching methods and approaches, strategies of adaptability, and pedagogical innovations at EPFL. Next to this, Helena works on developing a better understanding of teaching and learning transversal skills, with a particular interest in teaching ethics across the engineering curriculum, and she also works on examining the aspects of project based learning from students' and teachers' perspectives. In her previous work, Helena has done research on characteristics of teacher learning in innovative learning environments in schools across Hungary and Portugal, and she has also worked on studying identity formation through curricular material, such as history and language textbooks, across the Balkan countries. Helena holds a PhD in educational sciences obtained as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest and from University of Lisbon, and a MA in educational policy and management from Aarhus University and Deusto University thought the Erasmus Mundus scholarship. She has worked as a consultant for Technopolis Group in UK and prior to that Helena was a trainee with the Directorate -General for Education and Culture at the European Commission.
Ambrogio FasoliAmbrogio FASOLI was born on November 10, 1964, in Milano, Italy. After a classical high school diploma (Maturità Classica) and graduation from the University of Milano, with the degree of Dottore in Fisica, he obtained his Phd at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale (EPFL) with a thesis on chaos in wave-particle interactions in plasmas, which was awarded the Best EPFL Thesis prize, in 1993. He then moved to the JET Joint Undertaking, the largest worlds fusion device, near Oxford, UK, to investigate Alfvén waves and burning plasma physics. In 1995-1996 he took a sabbatical leave, visiting several Universities and Research Institutes in Europe and in the USA, including three months at General Atomics in San Diego. In 1996-1997, during a second period at JET, he participated in the fusion power worlds record experiments in Deuterium-Tritium plasmas at JET. In 1997 he was nominated Assistant Professor in MIT Physics Department, where he led a basic plasma physics group and the international collaboration between MIT and JET. In 2001 Ambrogio FASOLI was nominated Assistant Professor of Physics at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, and Professeur Boursier of the Swiss National Science Foundation. He became member of CRPP Directorate and took the leadership of CRPP basic plasma physics group and of the TCV tokamak, one of the major fusion experiments worldwide. At European level he was scientific coordinator for JET experiments, spokesperson for multi-machine experiments in the frame of International Tokamak Physics Activities, and Project Leader for a JET Enhancement project. In 2005 he became Associate Professor of Physics with tenure at EPFL, then member of EFDA Science and Technology Advisory Committee, and of the Steering Committee of the Association EURATOM-Swiss Confederation. From 2006 he was also Deputy Director, then from 2007 Executive Director of CRPP and from 2008 Full Professor of Physics at EPFL. For a number of years he was the Chair of the EPFL Physics Strategic Committee and a member of the Directorate of the EPFL School of Sciences. Since the summer of 2014 Professor FASOLI was the sole Director of CRPP. He now represents Switzerland in the EUROfusion General Assembly and Bureau, and in the Governing Board for Fusion for Energy. He is member of the EUROfusion DEMO project Board, of the Scientific Board of the Helmotz Virtual Institute on Advanced Microwave Diagnostics, of the European Delegation for the Cooperation between Euratom and the Government of India in Fusion Energy Research, of the European Consortium for the development of the ITER gyratron (EGYC), and participates to numerous international review panels. He chairs the FuseNet Academic Council, the International Advisory Panel for the Laboratory of Excellence Plas@Par in the Sorbonne Universities, the European Consortium for the construction of the ITER microwave Upper Launcher (ECHUL), and the Promotion Committee of the EPFL Faculty of Basic Sciences. He is one the three European representatives in the International Tokamak Physics Activities Coordinating Committee, advising ITER, and the Editor-in-Chief of the IAEA journal Nuclear Fusion. Since January 2019, Ambrogio Fasoli is the Chair of the General Assembly, i.e. the president of EUROfusion, the European Consortium for Development of Fusion Energy. Professor FASOLI is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and since 2001 a Visiting Professor at MIT Physics Department. He is the Director of the Swiss Plasma Center.
Daniel FavratDaniel Favrat got his Master degree in Mechanical Engineering from EPFL in 1972 and his PhD also from EPFL. He then spent 12 years in industrial research laboratories in Canada (Esso Canada) and Switzerland (CERAC: Centre Européen de Recherche Atlas Copco). From 1988 to 2013, he was full professor and director of the Industrial Energy Systems Laboratory (LENI) at EPFL. During that period he was successively director of the Institute of Energy and director of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering. From August 2013 he works at EPFL Energy Center first as director ad interim and now as director technologies.
His research fields include systemic analyses accounting for energy, environment and economics (so-called environomic optimisation) and advanced conversion systems for a more rational use of energy (heat pumps &ORC, engines, fuel cells, power plants, etc).
He is a member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences and of the National Academy of Technology in France. He has also an active participation in the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) as a member of the executive committee and vice-chair of the energy committee. He is associate editor of the journal "Energy" and of International Journal of thermodynamics. He is the author of several books on thermodynamics and energy systems analysis. He is also affiliate professor at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm.
Marc LaperrouzaMarc is a scientist and lecturer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and at the University of Lausanne (HEC). Marc obtained his PhD on China's telecommunication reforms from the London School of Economics. He holds a Master Degree in International Management (HEC, 1997) and an undergraduate degree in Business Management from the University of Lausanne (1993). He studied Chinese Language and Economics for two years at Fudan University, Shanghai (1993-1995) and one semester at the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, Canada (1996). Marc was previously senior research associate at EPFL working on the coherence between institutional and technological governance in infrastructures (2007-2011). In a former life, he worked as a research analyst at Swiss Re and at McKinseys Business Technology Office. He served as deputy director and senior advisor to the Evian Group, a think tank based at IMD (Lausanne, Switzerland) and lectures regularly on China and emerging markets at undergraduate, graduate and executive levels. Marc contributes frequently to Swiss media. He is the Founder and President of the bonopro association and recipient of the Swiss Re Civilian Service Prize (2011).
