Luc ThévenazLuc Thévenaz received in 1982 the M.Sc. degree in astrophysics from the Observatory of Geneva, Switzerland, and in 1988 the Ph.D. degree in physics from the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He developed at this moment his field of expertise, i.e. fibre optics. In 1988 he joined the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL) where he currently leads a research group involved in photonics, namely fibre optics and optical sensing. Research topics include Brillouin-scattering fibre sensors, nonlinear fibre optics, slow & fast light and laser spectroscopy in gases. His main achievements are: - the invention of a novel configuration for distributed Brillouin fibre sensing based on a single laser source, resulting in a high intrinsic stability making for the first time field measurements possible, - the development of a photoacoustic gas trace sensor using a near infra-red semiconductor laser, detecting a gas concentration at the ppb level, - the first experimental demonstration of optically-controlled slow & fast light in optical fibres, realized at ambient temperature and operating at any wavelength since based on stimulated Brillouin scattering. The first negative group velocity of light was also realized in optical fibres using this approach. In 1991, he visited the PUC University in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil where he worked on the generation of picosecond pulses in semiconductor lasers. In 1991-1992 he stayed at Stanford University, USA, where he participated in the development of a Brillouin laser gyroscope. He joined in 1998 the company Orbisphere Laboratories SA in Neuchâtel, Switzerland, as Expert Scientist to develop gas trace sensors based on photoacoustic laser spectroscopy. In 1998 and 1999 he visited the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejon, South Korea, where he worked on fibre laser current sensors. In 2000 he co-founded the spin-off company Omnisens that is developing and commercializing advanced photonic instrumentation. In 2007 he visited Tel Aviv University where he studied the all-optical control of polarization in optical fibres. During winter 2010 he stayed at the University of Sydney where he studied applications of stimulated Brillouin scattering in chalcogenide waveguides. In 2014 he stayed at the Polytechnic University of Valencia where he worked on microwave applications of stimulated Brillouin scattering. He was member of the Consortium in the FP7 European Project GOSPEL "Governing the speed of light", was Chairman of the European COST Action 299 "FIDES: Optical Fibres for New Challenges Facing the Information Society" and is author or co-author of some 480 publications and 12 patents. He is now Coordinator of the H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Networks FINESSE (FIbre NErve Systems for Sensing). He is co-Executive Editor-in-Chief of the journal "Nature Light: Science & Applications" and is Member of the Editorial Board (Associate Editor) for the journal "APL Photonics" & "Laser & Photonics Reviews". He is also Fellow of both the IEEE and the Optical Society (OSA).
Pramod RastogiHe received his MSc degree from the University of Lucknow, MTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, and doctorate degree from the University of Franche Comté in France. His research activities are principally in the area of holographic interferometry, speckle metrology, fiber optics sensors, phase shifting and moiré. He is the author or coauthor of more than 175 scientific papers of which more than 140 are published in peer-reviewed archival journals. He is also the author of book chapters, Encyclopaedia articles, and has edited several books in the field of optical metrology. His guest-edited three special sections on Optics in Switzerland for Optical Engineering in 1995 are even today an invaluable source of reference relative to optical engineering activities in Switzerland both at the academic and industrial levels. He has guest-edited over a dozen special dedicated issues in archival journals. He has also chaired and organized several international symposiums, such as, the International Conference on Applied Optical Metrology, Balatonfüred, Hungary, June 8-11, 1998; or the Conference on Trends in Optical Non-destructive Testing, Lugano, Switzerland, May 2-5, 2000, or the Conference on Advanced Phase Measurement Methods in Optics and Imaging, Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland, May 16-21, 2010 etc. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (1993) and a Fellow of the Society of the Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (1995). He is also a recipient of the Hetényi Award for the most significant research paper published in Experimental Mechanics in the year 1982.He was Elected as a Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) in 2014. He was recipient of the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award, 2014. The Dennis Gabor award is presented annually in recognition of outstanding accomplishments in diffractive wave front technologies, especially those which further the development of holography and metrology applications. He was an honorary visiting Professor at the IIT Delhi between 1999 & 2003. Since 2000 he has also been active in laying groundwork for collaboration with the Indian Institutes of science and technology. Between the years 2000 & 2004, he was doing this as a part of his broader activity as in-charge of relations with Asia. His initiatives have led to academic exchange programs involving faculty and students with a view to fostering networking, research linkages and partnerships. To cite a few of his many initiatives: his active contribution to the holding of a high level Indo Swiss Workshop on Science & Technology at Bangalore in 2003; the setting up of ISJRP - the pilot project on bilateral partnership in S&T between Switzerland and India - in 2004; developing ISBRI (Indo-Swiss bilateral research initiative) in 2006; etc. He remained as the main coordinator of the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Program between the period covering the program's inception in 2004 until February 2011. He is currently responsible for developing academic and institutional relations with the universities in India and South-East Asian countries. He has been instrumental in helping to open up a range of opportunities to the EPFL students, such as, doing their "mobility" years at one of the IITs or, their final year major projects or internships at one of the Indian institutions/companies. Over a hundred EPFL students have benefited from these programs. He was instrumental in establishing Internship program with the aim of promoting an awareness of EPFL among the IIT students. This program has become very popular among the IIT and IIITA students with several hundreds of them having benefited from this program. He played a key role in the setting up of the EPFL-IIT Madras joint postgraduate course on "Technology and sustainable development" in 2000-01. He was the co-director of the last edition of the course which was held between January and April, 2008.
Ian SmithPhD, Cambridge University, 1982 Interests 1 Active shape control for structures for deployment and where serviceability criteria governs 2 Biomimetic structures (learning, self-diagnosis, self-repair) 3 Infrastructure management support through structural identification 4 Advanced computer-aided engineering applications of stochastic optimization and search, multi-criteria analysis, system uncertainties (measurement and modelling), multi-modal approaches (combining statistics with behavior models) More details : see https://www.epfl.ch/labs/imac/research/iansmith/ Sabine SüsstrunkProf. Dr. Sabine Süsstrunk leads the Image and Visual Representation Lab in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) at EPFL since 1999. From 2015-2020, she was also the first Director of the Digital Humanities Institute (DHI), College of Humanities (CdH). Her main research areas are in computational photography, computational imaging, color image processing and computer vision, machine learning, and computational image quality and aesthetics. Sabine has authored and co-authored over 200 publications, of which 7 have received best paper/demo awards, and holds over 10 patents. Sabine served as chair and/or committee member in many international conferences on image processing, computer vision, and image systems engineering. She is President of the Swiss Science Council SSC, Founding Member and Member of the Board (President 2014-2018) of the EPFL-WISH (Women in Science and Humanities) Foundation, Member of the Board of the SRG SSR (Swiss Radio and Television Corporation), and Member of the Board of Largo Films. She received the IS&T/SPIE 2013 Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year Award for her contributions to color imaging, computational photography, and image quality, and the 2018 IS&T Raymond C. Bowman and the 2020 EPFL AGEPoly IC Polysphere Awards for excellence in teaching. Sabine is a Fellow of IEEE and IS&T.
