Stewart ColeProfessor Stewart Cole is an international authority in bacterial molecular-genetics and genomics. He has made outstanding contributions in several fields including: bacterial anaerobic electron transport; genome analysis of retroviruses and papillomaviruses; antibiotic resistance mechanisms; and the molecular microbiology of toxigenic clostridia. His studies on isoniazid and multidrug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, together with his pioneering work on the pathogenicity, evolution and genomics of the tubercle and leprosy bacilli, have made him an undisputed leader in the field of mycobacterial research. The findings of his research are of direct relevance to public health and disease-control in both the developing world and the industrialised nations. He has published over 250 scientific papers and review articles, and holds many patents.
Dusan LicinaDusan Licina is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor of Indoor Environmental Quality at the School for Architecture, Civil, and Environmental Engineering (ENAC) at EPFL. He leads the Human-Oriented Built Environment Lab (HOBEL) in Fribourg since 1 June 2018. Dusan’s research and teaching are driven by the need to advance knowledge of the intersections between people and the built environment in order to ensure high indoor environmental quality for building occupants with minimum energy input. His research group specializes in air quality engineering, focusing on understanding of concentrations, dynamics and fates of air pollutants within buildings, and development and application of methods to quantitatively describe relationships between air pollution sources and consequent human exposures. His research interests also encompass optimization of building ventilation systems with an aim to improve air quality and thermal comfort in an energy-efficient manner. Throughout his career, Dusan specialized in air quality engineering, focusing on sources and transport of air pollutants in buildings, human exposure assessment, and optimization of building ventilation systems with an aim to improve air quality. Dusan completed my joint Doctorate degree at the National University of Singapore and Technical University of Denmark. He was formerly master and bachelor student in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Belgrade, Serbia. Prior to joining EPFL, Dusan worked for 3.5 years in the USA, first he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California Berkeley, and then he served as director on the standard development team at International WELL Building Institute (IWBI) in New York. Dusan is the recipient of several honors and awards, including Ralph G. Nevin’s award by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) given in recognition of significant accomplishment in the study of human response to the environment. He is editorial board member of the highly acclaimed Indoor Air journal. He is passionate about raising awareness about the air quality issues worldwide and developing buildings that are not only energy efficient, but that also contribute to “Michelin Star” indoor air quality.
Catherine DehollainShe got the Master Degree in Electrical Engineering in 1982 from EPFL. Then, she worked in Geneva up to 1990 as a Senior Design Engineer in telecommunications at the European research center of Motorola. From 1990 up to 1995, she did her PhD thesis at the Chaire des Circuits et Systemes at EPFL in the domain of impedance broadband matching circuits. Since 1995, she is responsible at EPFL for the RFIC group. She has participated to different Swiss research projects as well as European projects dedicated to data communication of sensors nodes (e.g. MuMoR, Minami European projects) as well as remote powering of sensor nodes. Her main domains of interest are telecom applications (e.g. Impulse radio Ultra-Wide Band, super-regenerative receivers, RFIDs)as well as biomedical applications. She has been the coordinator of European projects (e.g. FP6 SUPREGE, FP7 Ultrasponder)and of Swiss projects (e.g. CAPED CTI project, NEURO-IC SNF project).
John McKinneyProfessor John McKinney received his Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University (New York, NY) in 1994 for studies on cell cycle regulation in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
in the laboratory of Fred Cross. From 1995 to 1998, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of William Jacobs at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, NY), where he studied mechanisms of persistence in
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
. In 1999, he returned to Rockefeller University to establish his own laboratory as an Assistant (1999-2004) and then Associate (2004-2007) Professor. In July 2007, the lab relocated to the Global Health Institute in the School of Life Sciences at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, where McKinney is Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Microbiology and Microsystems (LMIC). Our research focuses on understanding the mechanistic basis of bacterial persistence in the context of host immunity and antimicrobial therapy, using
M. tuberculosis
as a "model" system.
Martin HaslerAfter a PhD and a postdoc in theoretical physics, Martin Hasler has pursued reasearch in electrical circuit and filter theory. His current interests are the applications of nonlinear dynamics in engineering and biology. In particular, he is interested in information processing in biological and technological networks. He is most well-known for his work in communications using chaos and in synchronization of networks of dynamical systems.
He joined EPFL in 1974, became a titular professor in 1984 and a full professor in 1998. In 2002, he was acting Dean of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences. He was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 1993. He was the general chair of ISCAS 2000 in Geneva. He was Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions in Circuits and Systems from 1991 to 1993 and Editor-in-Chief from 1993 to 1995. He was elected vice-president for Technical Activities of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society from 2002 to 2005. He is a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Jean-Jacques MeisterA Swiss citizen, Jean-Jacques Meister was born in 1950. He received a diploma in electrical engineering, then a diploma in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He joined the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and obtained a PhD in1983. From 1984 to 1990, he worked in different areas of biophysics and biomedical engineering. His main contributions concern novel noninvasive methods for the prevention and diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases: mechanical properties of the arterial wall, arterial hemodynamics, and Doppler ultrasonography. In 1990, he was recruited as a full professor of experimental physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. He was director of the laboratory of biomedical engineering until 2001, then director of the laboratory of cell biophysics. His fields of research are cellular biophysics: cytoskeleton dynamics, motility & adhesion of cells and calcium dynamics in smooth muscle cells. He spent a sabbatical leave in 2000 at the famous Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts -USA to improve his skills in molecular and cellular biology. His teaching activities include courses in general physics, Newtonian mechanics, biomedical engineering and biophysics presented to undergraduate and graduate EPFL students in physics and engineering. He is author or co-author of more than 230 scientific papers & book chapters and 8 international patents.
