Johan Auwerx is Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he occupies the Nestle Chair in Energy Metabolism. Dr. Auwerx has been using molecular physiology and systems genetics to understand metabolism in health, aging and disease. Much of his work focused on understanding how diet, exercise and hormones control metabolism through changing the expression of genes by altering the activity of transcription factors and their associated cofactors. His work was instrumental for the development of agonists of nuclear receptors - a particular class of transcription factors - into drugs, which now are used to treat high blood lipid levels, fatty liver, and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Auwerx was amongst the first to recognize that transcriptional cofactors, which fine-tune the activity of transcription factors, act as energy sensors/effectors that influence metabolic homeostasis. His research validated these cofactors as novel targets to treat metabolic diseases, and spurred the clinical use of natural compounds, such as resveratrol, as modulators of these cofactor pathways.
Johan Auwerx was elected as a member of EMBO in 2003 and is the recipient of a dozen of international scientific prizes, including the Danone International Nutrition Award, the Oskar Minkowski Prize, and the Morgagni Gold Medal. His work is highly cited by his peers with a h-factor of over 100. He is an editorial board member of several journals, including Cell Metabolism, Molecular Systems Biology, The EMBO Journal, Journal of Cell Biology, Cell, and Science. Dr. Auwerx co-founded a handful of biotech companies, including Carex, PhytoDia, and most recently Mitobridge, and has served on several scientific advisory boards.
Dr. Auwerx received both his MD and PhD in Molecular Endocrinology at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium. He was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Melanie Blokesch holds a PhD degree from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany. After a postdoctoral stay at Stanford University (USA; Department of Microbiology and Immunology) she joined EPFL as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor (tenured) in 2016. In 2018, Melanie Blokesch was nominated as new member of the the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) National Research Council (starting date: April 2019). Melanie Blokesch is also an elected member of the European Academy of Microbiology (EAM; since 2018) and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO; since 2019). Among other awards and grants, Melanie Blokesch has been honored with the Prize for Junior Scientists of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2005, an ERC Starting Grant in 2012, the EPFL teaching award "Polysphère" for best teacher in the School of Life Sciences (academic year 2014-2015), the Research Award by the Association for General and Applied Microbiology (VAAM; Germany) in 2015, and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2016. In 2017, Melanie Blokesch was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) International Research Scholarship.
Matteo Dal Peraro graduated in Physics at the University of Padua in 2000. He obtained his Ph.D. in Biophysics at the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA, Trieste) in 2004. He then received postdoctoral training at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia) under the guidance of Prof. M. L. Klein. He was nominated Tenure Track Assistant Professor at the EPFL School of Life Sciences in late 2007.
His research at the Laboratory for Biomolecular Modeling (LBM), within the Interfaculty Institute of Bioengineering (IBI), focuses on the multiscale modeling of large macromolecular systems.
2020-current Full Professor at the Institute of Bioengineering, EPFL, Switzerland2013-2020 Associate Professor (with tenure) at the Institute of Bioengineering, EPFL, Switzerland 2013 Associate Professor (with tenure) at Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Boston University, USA 2007-2013 Assistant Professor (tenure-track) at Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Boston University, USA 2007 Post-doctoral Fellow at Center for Engineering in Medicine of Harvard Medical School, USA 2000-2007 PhD. in Applied Physics at Stanford University, USA 1996-2000 B.S. in Physics at Bilkent University, Turkey
Francesco Stellacci graduated in Materials Engineering at the Politecnico di Milano in 1998 with a thesis on photochromic polymers with Prof. Giuseppe Zerbi and Mariacarla Gallazzi. In 1999 he moved to the Chemistry Department of the University of Arizona for as a post-doc in the group of Joe Perry in close collaboration with the group of Seth Marder. In 2002 he moved to the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an assistant professor. He was then promoted to associate without (2006) and with tenure (2009). In 2010 he moved to the Institute of Materials at EPFL as a full Professor. He holds the Alcan EP Chair. Francesco was one of the recipients of the Technology Review TR35 "35 Innovator under 35" award in 2005, and the Popular Science Magazine "Brilliant 10" award in 2007. He has been a Packard Fellow starting 2005.
After obtaining an M.D. from the University of Geneva and completing a clinical training in pathology, internal medicine and infectious diseases in Geneva and at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Didier Trono embarked in a scientific career at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research of MIT. In 1990, he joined the faculty of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies to launch a center for AIDS research. He moved back to Europe seven years later, before taking the reins of the newly created EPFL School of Life Sciences, which he directed from 2004 to 2012. He is now actively engaged in the efforts of Switzerland to integrate new technologies in the fields of precision medicine and personalized health.
Prof. C. Pulgarin is Chemist from Lausanne University, Master in environmental chemistry from Geneva University, Ph D in synthesis bio-inspired of natural substances from Neuchâtel University. During his education he carried out several industrial trainings.
Since March 1989, he has been working at the EPFL where he is leader of the Advanced Oxidation Processes Group (GPAO) active in the development chemical, photochemical, electrochemical, ultrasonic processes, their coupling between them and with biological systems to degrade chemical and microbiological pollutants in water and air. He has an H index of 40 and he is the world most cited author in 1) TiO2 photo-assisted bacterial inactivation in water and 2) Coupling of photochemical and biological processes for pollutant degradation. He has been involved in ten African, South American and European international research projects. He has been Swiss representative in COST program 540.
Dr. Michel Aguet, MD, held positions in academia and industry (Associate Professor at the Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Zürich; Head of Molecular Oncology, Genentech, So. San Francisco) before he was appointed director of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) (1996-2009). In the context of the integration of ISREC into the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), he was appointed as Full Professor at the newly established School of Life Sciences in 2005. From 2001-2013 he directed the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Molecular Oncology, a national program launched by the Swiss National Science Foundation to encourage translational cancer research and for which ISREC was the leading house. Dr. Aguet has been a SAB member in the pharmaceutical industry, biotech industry and venture capital industry since 1997.
A large part of his scientific career was devoted to exploring the molecular biology of interferons (cloning of the interferon gamma receptor, generation of various interferon signaling mutants in the mouse) and, in collaboration with Prof. Charles Weissmann, to investigating the role of prion related protein PrP in mouse prion disease models. In recent years his research focused on characterizing the role of BCL9 proteins, which are part of the Wnt/beta-catenin transcriptional activation complex, in regulating stem cell traits in intestinal epithelium and colorectal cancer. His laboratory is now closed due to retirement.
