David Atienza AlonsoDavid Atienza Alonso is an associate professor of EE and director of the Embedded Systems Laboratory (ESL) at EPFL, Switzerland. He received his MSc and PhD degrees in computer science and engineering from UCM, Spain, and IMEC, Belgium, in 2001 and 2005, respectively. His research interests include system-level design methodologies for multi-processor system-on-chip (MPSoC) servers and edge AI architectures. Dr. Atienza has co-authored more than 350 papers, one book, and 12 patents in these previous areas. He has also received several recognitions and award, among them, the ICCAD 10-Year Retrospective Most Influential Paper Award in 2020, Design Automation Conference (DAC) Under-40 Innovators Award in 2018, the IEEE TCCPS Mid-Career Award in 2018, an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2016, the IEEE CEDA Early Career Award in 2013, the ACM SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award in 2012, and a Faculty Award from Sun Labs at Oracle in 2011. He has also earned two best paper awards at the VLSI-SoC 2009 and CST-HPCS 2012 conference, and five best paper award nominations at the DAC 2013, DATE 2013, WEHA-HPCS 2010, ICCAD 2006, and DAC 2004 conferences. He serves or has served as associate editor of IEEE Trans. on Computers (TC), IEEE Design & Test of Computers (D&T), IEEE Trans. on CAD (T-CAD), IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing (T-SUSC), and Elsevier Integration. He was the Technical Program Chair of DATE 2015 and General Chair of DATE 2017. He served as President of IEEE CEDA in the period 2018-2019 and was GOLD member of the Board of Governors of IEEE CASS from 2010 to 2012. He is a Distinguished Member of ACM and an IEEE Fellow.
Colin Neil JonesColin Jones is an Associate Professor in the Automatic Control Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. He was a Senior Researcher at the Automatic Control Lab at ETH Zurich until 2011 and obtained a PhD in 2005 from the University of Cambridge for his work on polyhedral computational methods for constrained control. Prior to that, he was at the University of British Columbia in Canada, where he took a BASc and MASc in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. Colin has worked in a variety of industrial roles, ranging from commercial building control to the development of custom optimization tools focusing on retail human resource scheduling. His current research interests are in the theory and computation of predictive control and optimization, and their application to green energy generation, distribution and management.
Volkan CevherVolkan Cevher received the B.Sc. (valedictorian) in electrical engineering from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, in 1999 and the Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA in 2005. He was a Research Scientist with the University of Maryland, College Park from 2006-2007 and also with Rice University in Houston, TX, from 2008-2009. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and a Faculty Fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rice University. His research interests include machine learning, signal processing theory, optimization theory and methods, and information theory. Dr. Cevher is an ELLIS fellow and was the recipient of the Google Faculty Research award in 2018, the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award in 2016, a Best Paper Award at CAMSAP in 2015, a Best Paper Award at SPARS in 2009, and an ERC CG in 2016 as well as an ERC StG in 2011.
Boi FaltingsProfessor Faltings joined EPFL in 1987 as professor of Artificial Intelligence. He holds a PhD degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a diploma from the ETHZ. His research has spanned different areas of intelligent systems linked to model-based reasoning. In particular, he has contributed to qualitative spatial reasoning, case-based reasoning (especially for design problems), constraint satisfaction for design and logistics problems, multi-agent systems, and intelligent user interfaces. His current work is oriented towards multi-agent systems and social computing, using concepts of game theory, constraint optimization and machine learning. In 1999, Professor Faltings co-founded Iconomic Systems, a company that developed a new agent-based paradigm for travel e-commerce. He has since co-founded 5 other startup companies and advised several others. Prof. Faltings has published more than 150 refereed papers on his work, and participates regularly in program committees of all major conferences in the field. He has served as associate editor of of the major journals, including the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (JAIR) and the Artificial Intelligence Journal. From 1996 to 1998, he served as head of the computer science department.
Yves PerriardYves Perriard was born in Lausanne in 1965. He received the M. Sc. in Microengineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Lausanne (EPFL) in 1989 and the Ph D. degree in 1992. Co-founder of Micro-Beam SA, he was CEO of this company involved in high precision electric drive. Senior lecturer from 1998 and professor since 2003, he is currently director of Laboratory of Integrated Actuators. His research interests are in the field of new actuator design and associated electronic devices. In 2009, he is appointed Vice-Director of the Microengineering Institute in Neuchâtel until 2011. In 2013 the Federal Council has named him the the CTI commission in Bern. In 2014 he is appointed guest professor at Zhejiang University in China. In 2017, the lab is granted by the Werner Siemens Foundation of an amount of 12 millions CHF in order to set up a new Center for Artificial Muscules. Since 2018, he is Expert with Innosuisse, the new Swiss Innovation Agency. http://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=fr&user=V2onuO8AAAAJ https://actu.epfl.ch/news/a-12-million-franc-donation-to-create-a-center-for/ Paul XirouchakisPaul Xirouchakis obtained his diplôme in mechanical and electrical engineering at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece in 1971. He continued his education at the Ecole Nationale Superieure de Techniques Avancées, in Paris, France where he obtained his diplôme dIngénieur de lE.N.S.T.A. et dIngénieur civil du Génie Maritime in 1973. He obtained his PhD degree in Structural Mechanics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978. He was appointed thereafter assistant and later associate professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1978-1985). Subsequently he was nominated associate professor at the National Technical University in Athens (1985-1987). After about eight years working in the industry with JJMA, Arlington, Virginia (in parallel he also obtained a PhD degree in Information Technology, in 1992 from George Mason University) he was nominated at EPFL professor of computer-aided design and manufacturing since July 1995. At EPFL he teaches design for X at the bachelors level, computer-aided manufacturing and multi-body dynamics simulation at the masters level and manufacturing information systems at the doctoral level. His research covers the development of methods and computer tools for the (sustainable) product design and manufacturing. Current research projects deal with the development of method and tools for resource efficient part manufacturing, chatter-free part programming, development of a virtual multi-body dynamics machine tool environment and composites drilling programming.
Vincenzo SavonaVincenzo Savona studied physics in Pisa at the Scuola Normale Superiore and the University of Pisa, prior to completing his PhD at the EPFL's Institute of Theoretical Physics. Subsequently he did post-doctoral work, first at the EPFL and then in the physics department of the Humboldt University of Berlin. In 2002, he returned to the EPFL to create his own research group, receiving a "professeur boursier" fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. In 2006, he was appointed tenure-track assistant professor at the EPFL and joined the NCCR for Quantum Photonics. In 2010 he was appointed associate professor. Currently he directs the Laboratory of Theoretical Physics of Nanosystems.
Michaël Clément Louis Ghislain ThémansMichaël Thémans holds a M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics (University of Namur, Belgium) and a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Transportation Modeling (EPFL, Switzerland). His Ph.D. thesis, supervised by Prof. Michel Bierlaire, was entitled "Numerical Methods and Models Relevant to Transportation Applications".
Between 2002 and 2007, he was research and teaching assistant in the Transport and Mobility Laboratory at EPFL. He published 5 papers in international journals in the field of Transportation and Operations Research. He was teaching assistant for 15 courses in Operations Research and Behavioral Modeling. He also supervised 20 master theses and research projects in Optimization and Behavioral Modeling. During the same period, he was working on several large-scale transportation-related research projects, in association with MIT and ETH Zurich as well as transportation professionals in Switzerland (Bureau Robert Grandpierre Rapp, Lausanne, Büro Widmer, Frauenfeld), sponsored both by the Swiss Federal Office of Roads and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Between 2007 and 2009, he was statistician and R&D specialist at the Nestlé Research Center in Lausanne. He provided support in statistics and modeling to R&D centers worldwide and was involved in over 50 R&D projects. In parallel to this, he developed innovative discrete choice models to predict consumer purchasing behavior and disseminated these new methodologies to Nestlé markets worldwide. He also designed and analyzed over 40 market research studies for various Nestlé markets around the world. He also gave training in market research and Design of Experiments to R&D community.
Between 2007 and 2011, he also holded a position as lecturer at EPFL, teaching a master course in Numerical Optimization. Since 2014, he is lecturer at EPFL, co-teaching the "Global Issues" course entitled "Mobility B" which focuses on transportation systems and logistics systems.
Between 2010 and 2014, he was the Deputy Director of EPFL's Transportation Center (TraCE), in charge of the operational management of the EPFL's Transportation Center with the main focus on the business development activities. The main tasks associated with this position were:
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Develop strategic business partnerships and research projects with private companies and industries as well as public institutions and authorities, at the local, national and international levels.
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Percolate and highlight EPFL's ongoing research activities in transportation outside EPFL.
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Obtain external funding to conduct new cutting-edge multi-disciplinary research projects in the field of transportation at EPFL.
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Management of large-scale R&D projects with industry.
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Promotion of technology transfer and innovation in all fields related to transportation and mobility.
Between January 2015 and December 2016, he was Deputy of the Vice-President for Innovation and Technology Transfer at EPFL, in charge of seconding the Vice-President Adrienne Corboud Fumagalli in her various tasks.
Since January 2017, he is the Deputy of the Vice-President for Innovation at EPFL and the Head of the "Large Enterprises" and "Innovation Projects" Units of the Vice-Presidency for Innovation. He is also in charge of the operational management of 5 Interdisciplinary Centers affiliated to the Vice-Presidency for Innovation.
Since May 2017, he also holds the position of Vice-President of the EPFL Innovation Park Foundation.
Since mid-2018, he acts as the EPFL’s representative in the Board of Switzerland Innovation Network West EPFL (an innovation-driven network composed of 6 innovation poles in Western Switzerland).
Some other activities and affiliations of Michaël Thémans include:
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Scientific consulting for various private companies and national agencies in Switzerland and in France.
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Business Development and Fund Raising for various EPFL's startups and spin-offs.
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Strategic Business Development Advisor for BestMile SA.
Since May 2012, in parallel to his main activity at EPFL, he is partner and Chief Business Development Officer at "6T - Bureau de Recherche", an EPFL's spin-off specialized in mobility analysis.
His main scientific expertise is in the design, development and applications of demand models and optimization algorithms, which he successfully used during ten years in transportation, food and marketing contexts. He also has a significant experience in market research and consumer understanding. He also has a strong experience in the transportation demand analysis and in the modeling/optimization/simulation of complex transportation systems.
During the years 2010-2014, he has acquired a global knowledge and expertise in transportation thanks to the operational and strategic management of EPFL's Transportation Center (TraCE) which gathers all EPFL's laboratories related to transportation and mobility.
He has also developed over the past seven years a strong experience and expertise in large-scale project management, people management, business development and technology transfer from research to business, with a strong focus on partnerships between academia and Large Enterprises in Switzerland and abroad. 