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).
Edoardo CharbonEdoardo Charbon (SM’00 F’17) received the Elektrotechnik Diploma from ETH Zurich, the M.S. from the University of California at San Diego, and the Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, 1991, and 1995, respectively, all in electrical engineering and EECS. He has consulted with numerous organizations, including Bosch, X-Fab, Texas Instruments, Maxim, Sony, Agilent, and the Carlyle Group. He was with Cadence Design Systems from 1995 to 2000, where he was the architect of the company's initiative on information hiding for intellectual property protection. In 2000, he joined Canesta Inc., as the Chief Architect, where he led the development of wireless 3-D CMOS image sensors. Since 2002 he has been a member of the faculty of EPFL, where is a full professor since 2015. From 2008 to 2016 he was full professor and chair at the Delft University of Technology, where he spearheaded the university's effort on cryogenic electronics for quantum computing as part of QuTech. He has been the driving force behind the creation of deep-submicron CMOS SPAD technology, which is mass-produced since 2015 and is present in smartphones, telemeters, proximity sensors, and medical diagnostics tools. His interests span from 3-D vision, LiDAR, FLIM, FCS, NIROT to super-resolution microscopy, time-resolved Raman spectroscopy, and cryo-CMOS circuits and systems for quantum computing. He has authored or co-authored over 400 papers and two books, and he holds 23 patents. Dr. Charbon is a distinguished visiting scholar of the W. M. Keck Institute for Space at Caltech, a fellow of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Photonics Society, and a fellow of the IEEE.
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.
Martin VetterliMartin Vetterli was appointed president of EPFL by the Federal Council following a selection process conducted by the ETH Board, which unanimously nominated him.
Professor Vetterli was born on 4 October 1957 in Solothurn and received his elementary and secondary education in Neuchâtel Canton. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich (ETHZ) in 1981, a Master’s of Science degree from Stanford University in 1982, and a PhD from EPFL in 1986. Professor Vetterli taught at Columbia University as an assistant and then associate professor. He was subsequently named full professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley before returning to EPFL as a full professor at the age of 38. He has also taught at ETHZ and Stanford University.
Professor Vetterli has earned numerous national and international awards for his research in electrical engineering, computer science and applied mathematics, including the National Latsis Prize in 1996. He is a fellow of both the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member the US National Academy of Engineering. He has published over 170 articles and three reference works.
Professor Vetterli’s work on the theory of wavelets, which are used in signal processing, is considered to be of major importance by his peers, and his areas of expertise, including image and video compression and self-organized communication systems, are central to the development of new information technologies. As the founding director of the National Centre of Competence in Research on Mobile Information and Communication Systems, Professor Vetterli is a staunch advocate of transdisciplinary research.
Professor Vetterli knows EPFL inside and out. An EPFL graduate himself, he began been teaching at the school in 1995, was vice president for International Affairs and then Institutional Affairs from 2004 to 2011, and served as dean of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences in 2011 and 2012. In addition to his role as president of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation, a position he held from 2013 to 2016, he heads the EPFL’s Audiovisual Communications Laboratory (LCAV) since 1995.
Professor Vetterli has supported more than 60 students in Switzerland and the United States in their doctoral work and makes a point of following their highly successful careers, whether it is in the academic or business world.
He is the author of some 50 patents, some of which were the basis for start-ups coming out of his lab, such as Dartfish and Illusonic, while others were sold (e.g. Qualcomm) as successful examples of technology transfer. He actively encourages young researchers to market the results of their work.
Theo LasserDe nationalité allemande, né en 1952 à Lauchheim (Baden-Württemberg). Après des études de physique à l'Université Fridericiana de Karlsruhe, il y obtient son diplôme de physique en 1978.
En 1979, il rejoint l'Institut de Recherches franco-allemand à Saint-Louis (France) comme collaborateur scientifique. En 1986, il rejoint la division de recherche de Carl Zeiss à Oberkochen (Allemagne) où il développe principalement divers systèmes laser pour des applications médicales. Dès 1990, il dirige le laboratoire laser de la division médicale. En 1993, il prend la direction de l'unité "laser d'ophtalmologie". Dès le début 1995, il est chargé de restructurer et regrouper les nombreuses activités d'ophtalmologie chez Carl Zeiss et de les transférer à Jena. Durant cette période, il réalise des nouveaux instruments de réfraction, des biomicroscopes et des caméras rétiniennes.
Dès janvier 1998, il dirige la recherche de Carl Zeiss à Jena où il initie de nouveaux projets en microscopie, en microtechnique et en recherche médicale. En juillet 1998, il est nommé professeur ordinaire en optique biomédicale à l'Institut d'optique appliquée. Au sein du Département de microtechnique, son activité de recherche porte sur la photonique biomédicale. Il participe à l'enseignement d'optique et d'instrumentation biomédicale.
Short CV
1972 Physics University of Karlsruhe (Germany)
1979 l'Institut de Recherches franco-allemand à Saint-Louis (France)
1986 central research division Carl Zeiss, Oberkochen (Germany)
1990 Med - Division, ophthalmic lasers
1994 Ophthalmology division, Carl Zeiss Jena
1998 Head of Central research Carl Zeiss Jena
1998 full Professor Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne, Switzerland
Claudio BruschiniClaudio Bruschini holds an MSc in high energy physics from the University of Genova and a PhD in Applied Sciences from the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He started his career with INFN (Italy, 1993), in the WA92 CERN collaboration (particle physics), and then moved to CERN as a Fellow in the European GP-MIMD2 project, attached to the NA48 collaboration (particle physics, parallel programming, 1994-1995). He then started his close collaboration with EPFL, first in the DeTeC (Demining Technology Center) project (sensors for landmine detection/humanitarian demining, 1996-1997). After DeTeC's end, he started the first of a series of fruitful collaborations with the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) on humanitarian demining related R&D (1998). This was followed by the EUDEM survey project (The European Union in Humanitarian Demining, 1998), the EUDEM2 three year EC sponsored support measure (www.eudem.info, 2001-2004), and the DELVE support action (www.delve.vub.ac.be, 2007). In parallel he started working within the EPFL's AQUA group (Advanced Quantum Architectures, Edoardo Charbon), on topics as diverse as ultrasonic sensors for in-air application, optical 3D and high speed 2D sensing, sensor networks, or tracking/motion capture systems, in particular for the preparation of research projects. This culminated in the European MEGAFRAME (www.megaframe.eu, FP6, 2006-2010, SPAD arrays and related in-pixel time stamping electronics in deep submicron CMOS technology) and SPADnet (www.spadnet.eu, FP7, 2010-2014, networked SPAD arrays for Positron Emission Tomography) projects, coordinated by EPFL-AQUA. As from 2009 he also worked with Dario Floreano on the management of the CURVACE Curved Artificial Compound Eyes FP7 project (www.curvace.org), coordinated by EPFL-LIS. He was also active with CHUV (Lausanne University Hospital) within EndoTOFPET-US (endoscopic PET) as well as on a CTI project devoted to the development of a new hand-held standalone tool for tracer-guided medical procedures. In 2014 he had also the pleasure of joining the EPFL ICLAB of Christian Enz during its ramp-up phase, collaborating on device related topics (SNF GigaRadMOST) and biomedical R&D (NanoTera WiseSkin). Claudio is now fully with EPFL’s Advanced Quantum Architecture (AQUA). He has also been active as independent scientific consultant, under the label CBR Scientific Consulting, on the preparation of (European) R&D project proposals and the execution of individual studies, and worked in 2006 for a local start-up as operations manager and R&D advisor.... but this is another story. An unauthorized early biography is available at http://lami.epfl.ch/team/claudiob/... Jean-Philippe ThiranJean-Philippe Thiran was born in Namur, Belgium, in August 1970. He received the Electrical Engineering degree and the PhD degree from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 1993 and 1997, respectively. From 1993 to 1997, he was the co-ordinator of the medical image analysis group of the Communications and Remote Sensing Laboratory at UCL, mainly working on medical image analysis. Dr Jean-Philippe Thiran joined the Signal Processing Institute (ITS) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, in February 1998 as a senior lecturer. He was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2004, to Associate Professor in 2011 and is now a Full Professor since 2020. He also holds a 20% position at the Department of Radiology of the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and of the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) as Associate Professor ad personam. Dr Thiran's current scientific interests include
Computational medical imaging: acquisition, reconstruction and analysis of imaging data, with emphasis on regularized linear inverse problems (compressed sensing, convex optimization). Applications to medical imaging: diffusion MRI, ultrasound imaging, inverse planning in radiotherapy, etc.Computer vision & machine learning: image and video analysis, with application to facial expression recognition, eye tracking, lip reading, industrial inspection, medical image analysis, etc.
