Pierre-Yves GilliéronHe graduated in Surveying Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne in 1988. He started his professional career in photogrammetry and digital mapping. He joined the Geodetic Eng. Laboratory in 1997 where he worked as research scientist on various navigation and satellite positioning projects.
Since 2018 he is deputy head of the section in environmental sciences and engineering at EPFL.
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He was member of the board of the swiss institute of navigation (ION-CH), member of the swiss geodetic committee (SGK) and expert in different committees of the swiss road association (VSS).
Laurent VullietEDUCATION
2016 Board Member Certificate, Swiss Board School, Switzerland
2008 AMP (Advanced Management Program), INSEAD, Fontainebleau, France
1986 PhD (Dr sc. tech.), EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
1980 Ms, Civil Engineering (Dipl. Bauing. ETH), ETHZ, Zurich, Switzerland
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
1994 - Present Professor, EPFL. Director of the Soil Mechanics Laboratory (1994-2008). Promoted from Associate to Full Professor in 1996. Part-time position since 2008
2008 - 2015 CEO, BG Consulting Engineers, Lausanne, Switzerland.
2001 - 2008 Dean, School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC), Ecole polytechnique fédérale, Lausanne (EPFL)
1999 - 2001 Head, Civil Engineering Department, EPFL
1989 - 1993 Senior Engineer, De Cérenville Géotechnique SA, Ecublens, Switzerland
1987 - 1989 Lecturer, Department of Civil Engineering and Engineering Mechanics, University of Arizona, Tucson, USA
1986 Invited Researcher, Laboratoire central des ponts et chaussées (LCPC), Paris, France
1981 - 1986 Research assistant, and PhD student, Soil Mechanics Laboratory (LMS), EPFL. Thesis on the modeling of natural creeping slopes. Co-advisors Prof. E. Recordon (EPFL) and Prof. K. Hutter (TU Darmstadt)
BOARDS / COUNCILS
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Member of the Board of Directors, Implenia, Dietlikon, Switzerland (2016 - present)
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Member of the Board of Directors, BG Consulting Engineers, Lausanne (2006 - 2015)
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Vice-President, Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA). 2009-2013.
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Member, Foundation Council, Foundation Les Bois Chamblard, financing research in Environmental Sciences at EPFL (focusing on bio-diversity). 2003-present
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Member, Foundation Council of the Presses Polytechniques et Universitaires Romandes (PPUR), Lausanne. 1995-present
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Member, Stiftungsrat der Präventionsstiftung der KGV (a Swiss foundation for the financing of applied research in the domain of natural risks from Cantonal Building Insurances). 2003-2008
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Member of the Board of Directors, Stump Bohr AG, Nänikon. 1998 2001
PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES
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Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects (SIA)
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American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)
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International Association for Computer Meth. and Advances in Geomechanics (IACMAG)
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International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE)
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International Society for Rock Mechanics (ISRM)
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Swiss Society for Soil and Rock Mechanics (SSMSR)
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Swiss Society for Earthquake Engineering and Structural Dynamics (SGEB)
SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEES
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Swiss National Science Foundation (NSF): member of the Foundation Council and of the Electoral Commission (1996-2003)
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Extra-Parliamentary National Commission on Natural Disasters (PLANAT): member of the Commission 1997-2007 (member of the Executive Board from 1997 to 2000)
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Natural Hazards Competence Centre CENAT (ETH Domain): founder member and member of the Board of Directors (1995-2007)
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Alliance of European Research Laboratories (ALERT), member of the Board of Directors (1995-2009)
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Beratende Kommission Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL): member (2000-2004)
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Centro Stefano Franscini (CSF, Monte Verità): member of the Scientific Advisory Committee (1997-2007)
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EPFL Press and Information Commission (CPI). Member 1994-94, President 1995-2000
EDITORIAL BOARDS
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Adjunct Editor-in-Chief, Revue française de génie civil (Hermès); founder member (1996-Present). Cette revue est devenue "European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering"
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Editorial Advisory Board, Int. J. Num. Analyt. Meth. in Geomech., John Wiley (1997-2009).
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Editorial Board, Int. J. of Geomechanics (2000-2009).
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Editorial Board, Computer & Geotechnics, Elsevier (2001-2009).
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Editorial Board, Rivista Italiana di Geotecnica (1997-2009).
Aurelio MuttoniAurelio Muttoni is full Professor and Head of the Structural Concrete Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (Switzerland). He received his diploma and PhD in civil engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich, Switzerland, in 1982 and 1989, respectively.
His current teaching activities focus on the conceptual design of structures, theory and dimensioning of concrete structures as well as bridge design. His research group is active in the following domains: behaviour and design methods for structural concrete, conceptual design of innovative structures, shear in structural concrete, punching shear of slabs, nonlinear structural analysis including its reliability, bond between steel and concrete, aggregate interlocking, fatigue and influence of sustained loading on the concrete strength, mechanical behaviour and design concepts for ultra-high performance concrete, textile concrete and recycled concrete.
Aurelio Muttoni was the recipient of the Chester Paul Siess Award for Excellence in Structural Research in 2010 and the co-recipient of the Wason Medal for Most Meritorious Paper in 2014 of the American Concrete Institute. He is a member of the Presidium of fib (International Federation for Structural Concrete), several fib commissions and task groups and has been Project Team Leader for the second generation of EN 1992-1-1 (Eurocode for structural concrete).
Aurelio Muttoni is also cofounder and partner of the Muttoni & Fernández consulting office (www.mfic.ch). This office is active in the conceptual design, analysis and dimensioning of load-bearing structure in architecture and civil engineering constructions as well as consulting activities in the field of structural engineering. Harry GuggerHarry Gugger started his professional career as a toolmakers apprentice from 1973 to 1977. From 1984 to 1989 he studied architecture at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ) with Flora Ruchat and at Columbia University, New York with Tadao Ando. He received his degree in architecture at ETH Zurich in 1990. In the same year he began his collaboration with Herzog & de Meuron (HdeM) when he was their assistant at the summer school in Karlsruhe. From 1991 to 2009 he was a partner of the firm. During his partnership Harry Gugger was, among many other projects, in charge of Tate Modern in London (1995-2000); the Headquaters for Prada USA in New York (2000-2002) and the Schaulager Basel for the Laurenz Foundation (1998-2003). His last projects at HdeM included CaixaForum, Madrid (20012008), Tate Modern Extension, London (2004- ) and KMOMA, The Kolkata Museum of Modern Art, Kolkata (2008- ). The Laban Dance Centre in London (1998-2003) was awarded the RIBA Stirling Prize 2003. In 2004 Harry Gugger received the Swiss Art Award Prix Meret Oppenheim.
His academic career started as visiting professor at the Hochschule für Architektur und Bauwesen in Weimar in 1994. From 2000-2006 he was an External Examiner at the AA School of Architecture in London. In 2001 he was a visiting professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). 2005 Harry Gugger became full professor for architectural design at the EPFL, where he founded the Laboratory for Architectural Production (lapa). His laboratory was in charge of the National Participation of Bahrain Reclaim at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 winning the Golden Lion award. In 2011 Harry Gugger transformed his laboratory into Laboratoire Bâle (laba) a satellite laboratory of the EPFL situated in Basel and dedicated to urban and architectural design.
From 1999-2007 Harry Gugger was a member of the cityscape commission in Basel and was on the board of trustees of the Swiss Architecture Museum from 2004-2007. 2010 he became a member of the board of trustees of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction. The same year he founded his new practice Harry Gugger Studio.
Kay SeverinKay Severin was born in Germany in 1967. He obtained his Ph.D. in 1995 with a thesis in the group of Prof. W. Beck, University of Munich. Subsequently, he joined the group of Prof. M. R. Ghadiri as a postdoctoral fellow. In 1997, he started independent research projects ("Habilitation") at the Department of Chemistry, University of Munich. In 2001, he became assistant professor at the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2009, he is full professor at the same institute.
Awards: Bayerischer Habilitations Förderpreis (1997), ADUC award of the year (2001), Heinz Maier-Leibnitz award of the DFG (2001), award of the Karl-Ziegler foundation (2001), Arnold Sommerfeld award of the Bavarian Academy of Science (2001), Werner Prize of The Swiss Chemical Society (2003), Otto Roelen Medal of the DECHEMA (2005), award for chemistry of the Academy of Sciences, Göttingen (2007), Dalton Transactions European Lectureship (2008).
Romano Tobias WyssPh.D. in Geography
Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt (Germany)
M.Sc. in Economics and Geography
Utrecht University (The Netherlands)
B.Sc. in Geography
University of Fribourg (Switzerland)
Henry MarkramHenry Markram started a dual scientific and medical career at the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. His scientific work in the 80s revealed the polymodal receptive fields of pontomedullary reticular formation neurons in vivo and how acetylcholine re-organized these sensory maps.
He moved to Israel in 1988 and obtained his PhD at the Weizmann Institute where he discovered a link between acetylcholine and memory mechanisms by being the first to show that acetylcholine modulates the NMDA receptor in vitro studies, and thereby gates which synapses can undergo synaptic plasticity. He was also the first to characterize the electrical and anatomical properties of the cholinergic neurons in the medial septum diagonal band.
He carried out a first postdoctoral study as a Fulbright Scholar at the NIH, on the biophysics of ion channels on synaptic vesicles using sub-fractionation methods to isolate synaptic vesicles and patch-clamp recordings to characterize the ion channels. He carried out a second postdoctoral study at the Max Planck Institute, as a Minerva Fellow, where he discovered that individual action potentials propagating back into dendrites also cause pulsed influx of Ca2 into the dendrites and found that sub-threshold activity could also activated a low threshold Ca2 channel. He developed a model to show how different types of electrical activities can divert Ca2 to activate different intracellular targets depending on the speed of Ca2 influx an insight that helps explain how Ca2 acts as a universal second messenger. His most well known discovery is that of the millisecond watershed to judge the relevance of communication between neurons marked by the back-propagating action potential. This phenomenon is now called Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP), which many laboratories around the world have subsequently found in multiple brain regions and many theoreticians have incorporated as a learning rule. At the Max-Planck he also started exploring the micro-anatomical and physiological principles of the different neurons of the neocortex and of the mono-synaptic connections that they form - the first step towards a systematic reverse engineering of the neocortical microcircuitry to derive the blue prints of the cortical column in a manner that would allow computer model reconstruction.
He received a tenure track position at the Weizmann Institute where he continued the reverse engineering studies and also discovered a number of core principles of the structural and functional organization such as differential signaling onto different neurons, models of dynamic synapses with Misha Tsodyks, the computational functions of dynamic synapses, and how GABAergic neurons map onto interneurons and pyramidal neurons. A major contribution during this period was his discovery of Redistribution of Synaptic Efficacy (RSE), where he showed that co-activation of neurons does not only alter synaptic strength, but also the dynamics of transmission. At the Weizmann, he also found the tabula rasa principle which governs the random structural connectivity between pyramidal neurons and a non-random functional connectivity due to target selection. Markram also developed a novel computation framework with Wolfgang Maass to account for the impact of multiple time constants in neurons and synapses on information processing called liquid computing or high entropy computing.
In 2002, he was appointed Full professor at the EPFL where he founded and directed the Brain Mind Institute. During this time Markram continued his reverse engineering approaches and developed a series of new technologies to allow large-scale multi-neuron patch-clamp studies. Markrams lab discovered a novel microcircuit plasticity phenomenon where connections are formed and eliminated in a Darwinian manner as apposed to where synapses are strengthening or weakened as found for LTP. This was the first demonstration that neural circuits are constantly being re-wired and excitation can boost the rate of re-wiring.
At the EPFL he also completed the much of the reverse engineering studies on the neocortical microcircuitry, revealing deeper insight into the circuit design and built databases of the blue-print of the cortical column. In 2005 he used these databases to launched the Blue Brain Project. The BBP used IBMs most advanced supercomputers to reconstruct a detailed computer model of the neocortical column composed of 10000 neurons, more than 340 different types of neurons distributed according to a layer-based recipe of composition and interconnected with 30 million synapses (6 different types) according to synaptic mapping recipes. The Blue Brain team built dozens of applications that now allow automated reconstruction, simulation, visualization, analysis and calibration of detailed microcircuits. This Proof of Concept completed, Markrams lab has now set the agenda towards whole brain and molecular modeling.
With an in depth understanding of the neocortical microcircuit, Markram set a path to determine how the neocortex changes in Autism. He found hyper-reactivity due to hyper-connectivity in the circuitry and hyper-plasticity due to hyper-NMDA expression. Similar findings in the Amygdala together with behavioral evidence that the animal model of autism expressed hyper-fear led to the novel theory of Autism called the Intense World Syndrome proposed by Henry and Kamila Markram. The Intense World Syndrome claims that the brain of an Autist is hyper-sensitive and hyper-plastic which renders the world painfully intense and the brain overly autonomous. The theory is acquiring rapid recognition and many new studies have extended the findings to other brain regions and to other models of autism.
Markram aims to eventually build detailed computer models of brains of mammals to pioneer simulation-based research in the neuroscience which could serve to aggregate, integrate, unify and validate our knowledge of the brain and to use such a facility as a new tool to explore the emergence of intelligence and higher cognitive functions in the brain, and explore hypotheses of diseases as well as treatments.
