Paolo RicciPaolo Ricci earned his masters degree in nuclear engineering at the Politecnico di Torino, Turin (Italy) in 2000. His doctoral studies were conducted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, with focus on kinetic simulation of magnetic reconnection in the Earth's magnetotail. He spent two-and-a-half years as a postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth College's Department of Physics and Astronomy, where he worked on gyrokinetic simulations of the Z pinch. He joined the EPFL's Swiss Plasma Center (SPC), as a EURATOM fellow in 2006, was named Tenure Track Assistant Professor in June 2010, and Associate Professor in August 2016. He is at the head of the SPC theory group. Paolo Ricci is the recipient of the 2016 Section de Physique Teaching Prize and of the 2021 Craie d'Or award from the EPFL physics bachelor students.
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).
Christos ComninellisChristos Comninellis, of Greek origin, born in 1945, received his Bachelor of Science in chemistry (distinction with honor) in 1970 from the University of Alexandria.
From 1971 to 1975, he worked as a chemist at the Institute of chemical engineering at the EPFL, where he achieved his PhD in technical sciences in 1979 for his research on the electrochemical fluorination of organic compounds in anhydrous hydrogen fluoride.
Appointed professor in 1996, he teaches at the Faculty of Basic Sciences (FSB) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL)
Applied Chemistry.
Transport Phenomena.
Chemical and Electrochemical Technologies Related to the Environment.
Electrochemical Engineering.
He also holds a teaching position at the Haute Ecole Valaisanne Sion (HEVs).
His research work is focused on environmental electrochemistry, electrocatalysis, fuel cell and electrochemical promotion in catalysis. An applied research for the utilization of electrochemical techniques in industry for the protection of the environment is a constant concern within his activities. As a result, the collaboration with the industry enabled the development of oxidation processes with regeneration of the oxidant using a new type of bipolar electrochemical reactor.
Christos Comninellis has published over 170 scientific papers, directed 17 doctoral theses and holds 14 patents. He has participated in over 130 international symposia, giving five plenary lectures during the last five years. He has been president of the Evaluation Committee of the FSB since the beginning of 2004 and is member of the jury of the EPFL prize for outstanding PhD-thesis.
Denis DubouleDenis Duboule is born in 1955 and is both swiss and french national. He studied biology at the university of Geneva, where he obtained a PhD in mammalian embryology in 1984. He then spent 10 years abroad, first as a group leader in the medical faculty in Strasbourg (France), then at the European Laboratory for Molecular Biology (EMBL) in Germany. In 1993, he was appointed full professor at the university of Geneva, where he chairs the department of Genetics and Evolution ever since 1997. In 2001, he chaired the national center of research Frontiers in Genetics and in 2012 the division III of the SNSF. In 2006, he was appointed full professor at the federal institute of technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, where he leads the laboratory of Developmental Genomics (UpDUB).
His research activities are in the fields of embryology, genetics and developmental genomics of mammals, in an evolutionnary context. In particular, his laboratory has been closely associated with the structural and functional studies of mammalian Hox genes, by using mouse molecular genetic approaches. Duboule is also active in the communication of science, is member of the Academia Europea as well as of several academies in Switzerland, France and the Netherland. He is a foreign member of the Royal Society (UK) and of the National Academy of Sciences USA. He has received various scientific prizes and awards, amongst which the Marcel Benoist Prize, the Louis-Jeantet prize for medicine in 1998 or the international INSERM prize in 2010 (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Duboule). Marco GrioniMarco Grioni was born in Milan (Italy) where he graduated in 1982. He has occupied research positions at Minneapolis (USA), Nijmegen (The Netherlands), Orsay (France) and Neuchâtel, where he became Privat Docent in Solid State Physics in 1994. Since 1996 he is at EPFL, where he teaches physics to undergraduate and graduate students. He is acting director of the Laboratory of Electron Spectroscopy of IPN, and an adjunct professor from 2005.
His research interests concern the electronic properties of novel materials,namely high-temperature superconductors, low-dimensional metals, and heavy fermion compounds, which he investigates by high-resolution photoemission (ARPES), ultrafast time-resolved ARPES, and photon-in photon-out synchrotron-based spectroscopies. Author of approx. 220 scientific articles, he is actively involved in the development of new instruments. From 2003 to 2006 he was the chairman of the users organization of the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF Grenoble). Between 2010 and 2017 he served as chairman of the scientific advisory committee of the french national synchrotron light source SOLEIL
