Ali H. SayedAli H. Sayed is Dean of Engineering at EPFL, Switzerland, where he also leads the Adaptive Systems Laboratory. He has also served as Distinguished Professor and Chairman of Electrical Engineering at UCLA. He is recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He is also a member of the World Academy of Sciences and served as President of the IEEE Signal Processing Society during 2018 and 2019.
Dr. Sayed is an author/co-author of over 570 scholarly publications and six books. His research involves several areas
including adaptation and learning theories, data and network sciences, statistical inference, and multiagent systems.
His work has been recognized with several major awards including the 2022 IEEE Fourier Award, the 2020 Norbert Wiener Society Award and the 2015 Education Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the 2014 Papoulis Award from the European Association for Signal Processing, the 2013 Meritorious Service Award and the 2012 Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the 2005 Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, the 2005 Distinguished Lecturer from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the 2003 Kuwait Prize, and the 1996 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize. His publications have been awarded several Best Paper Awards from the IEEE (2002, 2005, 2012, 2014) and EURASIP (2015). He is a Fellow of IEEE, EURASIP, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); the publisher of the journal Science.
Henning Paul-Julius StahlbergPositions:
Since 2020 Prof. Physics, IPHYS, SB, EPFL, Switzerland 2009 – 2021 Prof. Structural Biology, Biozentrum, University Basel, Switzerland
2009 – 2010 Adj. Assoc. Prof. Molecular & Cellular Biology, UC Davis, CA, USA
2007 – 2009 Assoc. Prof. Molecular & Cellular Biology, UC Davis, CA, USA
2003 – 2007 Assist. Prof. Molecular & Cellular Biology, UC Davis, CA, USA
Education: 2002 Habilitation, Biozentrum, University Basel, Switzerland 1997 – 2003 Postdoctoral Fellow, Biozentrum, University Basel, Switzerland 1992 – 1997 PhD Student, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland 1990 – 1991 Diploma Thesis in Solid State Physics, TU Berlin, Germany 1987 – 1993 Study of Physics, TU Berlin, Germany Selected Awards & Honors: 2009 W.M.Keck Award 2004 CAREER award, NSF, USA 2002 Habilitation, University Basel, Switzerland Selected Memberships: 2008 – 2013 Chancellor’s Fellow Award, UC Davis, CA, USA 2004 – 2009 Faculty of 1000 Since 1992 Swiss Society for Optics and Microscopy (SSOM)
Dario FloreanoProf. Dario Floreano is director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2010, he is the founding director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics, a research program that brings together more than 20 labs across Switzerland. Prof. Floreano holds an M.A. in Vision, an M.S. in Neural Computation, and a PhD in Robotics. He has held research positions at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, at Caltech/JPL, and at Harvard University. His main research interests are Robotics and A.I. at the convergence of biology and engineering. Prof. Floreano made pioneering contributions to the fields of evolutionary robotics, aerial robotics, and soft robotics. He served in numerous advisory boards and committees, including the Future and Emerging Technologies division of the European Commission, the World Economic Forum Agenda Council, the International Society of Artificial Life, the International Neural Network Society, and in the editorial committee of several scientific journals. In addition, he helped spinning off two drone companies (senseFly.com and Flyability.com) and a non-for-profit portal on robotics and A.I. (RoboHub.org). Books
Manuale sulle Reti Neurali, il Mulino (in Italian), 1996 (first edition), 2006 (second edition)Evolutionary Robotics, MIT Press, 2000
Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press, 2008
Flying Insects and Robots, Springer Verlag, 2010
Mathias LerchAss. Prof. Mathias Lerch heads the Urban Demography Laboratory (URBDEMO) at the Faculty of Natural, Architectural and Build Environment (ENAC), Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). To improve understanding of urban population growth, Lerch has developed multi-disciplinary research interests in the components of demographic change (mortality/health, fertility and migration), as well as in their interactions with socioeconomic and environmental developments.
Before joining the EPFL, Lerch has acted as the deputy head of the Laboratory of Fertility and Well-Being at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. He has analyzed and taught population change at various Swiss and German universities, as well as at statistical offices, often in transition countries. Since 2008, he has regularly advised national governments, United Nations entities, survey programs and NGOs on population issues and data collection.
Marcello IencaDr. Marcello Ienca is a Principal Investigator at the College of Humanities at EPFL where he leads the ERA-NET funded Intelligent Systems Ethics research unit. He is also an affiliate member of the Health Ethics and Policy unit, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, and an ordinary member of the
Competence for Rehabilitation Engineering & Science
at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
Dr. Ienca's scholarship focuses on the ethical, legal, social and policy implications of emerging technologies. In particular, he investigates the broader implications of new (and often converging) sociotechnical trends such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, digital epidemiology, robotics, assisted living, digital health, social media, dual use, and neurotechnology. He and his team use both theoretical and empirical methods to explore the requirements for responsible innovation, ethically-aligned technology design, user-centred design, and human-centered technology assessment.
Dr. Ienca is actively involved in science and technology policy within international organizations and professional societies. In particular, he is an appointed member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Steering Committee on Neurotechnology and the representative of the Swiss Delegation (appointed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, SERI). He has also been invited to serve as an expert advisor to the Council of Europe’s Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence and the Bioethics Committee. Dr. Ienca has written reports for the OECD, the Council of Europe, and the European Parliament's Panel for the Future of Science and Technology. He is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Italian Neuroethics Society (SINe), a former Board Member and current member of the Nominating Committee of the International Neuroethics Society (INS). Ienca is a member of the Editorial Board of several academic journals such as Neuroethics, Bioethica Forum, Frontiers in Neuroergonomics and Frontiers in Genetics.
Ienca has received several awards for social responsibility in science and technology such as the Vontobel Award for Ageing Research (Switzerland), the Prize Pato de Carvalho (Portugal), the Sonia Lupien Award (Canada), the Paul Schotsmans Prize from the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics (EACME) and the Data Privacy Plaque of Honour, awarded by the Italian Data Protection Authority. He has authored one monograph, several edited volumes, 60 scientific articles in peer-review journals, several book chapters and is a frequent contributor to Scientific American. His research was featured in academic journals such as
Neuron
,
Nature Biotechnology
,
Nature Machine Intelligence
,
Nature Medicine
and media outlets such as
Nature
,
The New Yorker
,
The Guardian
,
The Times
,
Die Welt
,
The Independent
, the
Financial Times
and others.
Furthermore, Dr. Ienca strongly supports open science, outreach and public engagement. He is committed to a holistic view of research that is not restricted to academia alone but involves an open approach to science communication, outreach and public engagement. Among other things, he is an open-science and open-data enthusiast and a human rights activist. He believes that there can be no ethical technological innovation without global justice.
