Olivier BurdetBorn 1960, Olivier Burdet has received his Diploma in Civil Engineering from EPFL in 1983. After a couple years in engineering practice, he went back to studying at the university of Texas at Austin, where he received his PhD in 1990.
Returning to EPFL in 1990, he is now a senior researcher and a lecturer in the field of reinforced concrete structures. He is also actively involved in the development of internet-based course contents and MOOCs.
Michel RappazAfter a PhD in solid state physics (1978) at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and a post-doc at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Michel Rappaz joined the Institute of Materials of EPFL in 1981. After two years in an engineering company, he came back to EPFL in 1984 where he was nominated Adjunct Professor in 1990 and Full Professor in 2003. He retired from EPFL in 2015 and is now Emeritus Professor and independent consultant for several industries and research centres.
His main interests are in phase transformations and solidification, in particular the coupling of macroscopic aspects of heat and mass transfer with microscopic aspects of microstructure and defect formation. Among his diverse achievements, one can mention in particular the development of cellular automata for grain structure predictions and of granular models for hot tearing formation in castings, the coupling of Finite Element method with microscopic models of nucleation and growth, the application of the phase field method to the understanding of various microstructures, the discovery of quasicrystal mediated-nucleation in alloys, and many other studies both fundamental at the microstructure-defect level and more applied at the level of processes.
Some of the software developments have been commercialized by a spin-off company founded by his group in 1991 (Calcom SA), now part of the French company ESI. Michel Rappaz initiated in 1992 an annual postgraduate course on solidification which has been attended by more than 900 participants from all over the world. He is presently collaborating closely with another spin-off company started from his group, Novamet SàrL.
Michel Rappaz has received several awards, in particular the Mathewson co-author award (1994) and author award (1997) of the American Mineral, Metals and Materials Society (TMS), the Koerber foundation award jointly with Profs Y. Bréchet and M. Asbby (1996), the Sainte-Claire Deville Medal (1996) and the Grand Medal (2011) from the French Materials Society, the Bruce Chalmers Award of TMS (2002), the Mc Donald Memorial Lecture award of Canada (2005), the FEMS European Materials Gold Medal (2013) and the Brimacombe Prize of TMS (2015). He is a highly-cited author of ISI, a fellow of ASM, IOP and TMS, and has co-authored more than 200 publications and two books.
Simon Nessim HeneinBorn in 1973 and of Egyptian-Swiss nationality, Simon Henein grew up in Cairo. He obtained an engineering degree at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 1996 and went on to complete his doctorate at the EPFL in 2000. In 2001, he published the book “Conception des guidages flexibles” which has become a reference in precision engineering. He then joined the Centre Suisse d’Electronique et Microtechnique (CSEM), Neuchatel, Switzerland, where he conceived and developed mechanisms for robotic, aerospace, medical and watchmaking applications. He pursued his research career at the Paul Scherrer Institute, Villigen, Switzerland, where he developed instruments for the Swiss Light Source Synchrotron (SLS). Since November 1st, 2012, he is associate professor in microengineering at the EPFL, holder of the Patek Philippe Chair and director of the Micromechanical and horological design laboratory (Instant-Lab).
Reymond ClavelReymond CLAVEL obtained his degree in mechanical engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 1973. After nine years of gathered experience in industrial plants at Hermes Precisa International (research and development), he was appointed professor at the EPFL, where he obtained his PhD degree in parallel robotics in 1991. He was then consecutively entrusted with the following positions: Head of the department, Director of the Section of micro engineering and, in 1993, Director of the Laboratory of robotics systems (LSRO). His present research topics are parallel robotics, high speed and high precision robotics, medical and surgical robotics applications, surgical instrumentation and precision mechanisms.
Reymond Clavels research successes in parallel and industrial robotics received worldwide special mentions.
Awards :
1989: Laureate of the JIRA AWARD (Japan Industrial Robot Association) for the DELTA parallel robot invented in 1985.
1996: Project winner of the Technologiestandort Schweiz competition and ABB Sonderpreis for the best robotics project.
1998: His laboratory is awarded the Grand Prix de lInnovation in Monaco for new robot technologies.
1999: Laureate of the Golden Robot Award for the DELTA Robot.
2003: Each of his three different submitted projects received the Swiss Technology Award.
2005: Project winner of the Swiss Technology Award competition with further the Sonderpreis 2005 from the Vontobel Foundation in the field of Inventing the future.
2006: Project winner of the Swiss Technology Award competition with Quantum leap into world of nano-EDM (a new high precision EDM machine based on the Delta kinematics).
2007: Two projects based on the LSROs researches are winner of the Swiss Technology Award competition: Cyberthosis for paraplegia rehabilitation (a collaboration with the company Swortec and the Fondation Suisse pour les Cyberthèses (FSC)) and the Microfactory realized in partnership with the CSEM .
