Nicolas GrandjeanNicolas Grandjean received a PhD degree in physics from the University ofNice Sophia Antipolis in 1994 and shortly thereafter joined the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a permanent staff member. In 2004, he was appointed tenure-track assistant professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he created the Laboratory for advanced semiconductors for photonics and electronics. He was promoted to full professor in 2009. He was the director of the Institute of Condensed Matter Physics from 2012 to 2016 and then moved to the University of California at Santa Barbara where he spent 6 months as a visiting professor. Since 2018, he is the head of the School of Physics at the EPFL. He was awarded the Sandoz Family Foundation Grant for Academic Promotion, received the “Nakamura Lecturer” Award in 2010, the "Quantum Devices Award” at the 2017 Compound Semiconductor Week, and “2016 best teacher” award from the EPFL Physics School. His research interests are focused on the physics of nanostructures and III-V nitride semiconductor quantum photonics.
Benoît Marie Joseph DeveaudBenoit Deveaud is now Research Director at Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau (France)
Benoît Deveaud was born in France in 1952. In 1971, he enters Ecole Polytechnique in Paris where he specializes in physics. In 1974, he joins the National Center for research in Telecommunications (CNET).
He undertakes at the same time studies on the main impurity centers in III-V semiconductors, and continues his studies in physics by preparing a diploma in solid state physics in Rennes. In 1984, he defends his PhD thesis at the University of Grenoble, under the supervision of Gérard Martinez. Meanwhile, his team gets interested in semiconductor microstructures and launches studies on the structural and optical properties of superlattices based on gallium arsenide. These studies highlight for example vertical transport in superlattices as well as the quantification of excitonic energies in a quantum well.
In 1986 he joins the team of Daniel Chemla in Bell Laboratories (Holmdel, USA) and takes part in the development of the first luminescence set-up having a temporal resolution better than 1 picosecond. He studies then ultrafast processes in quantum wells.
Returning to France in 1988, at CNET, he coaches a laboratory of high-speed studies, interested in the optical and electronic properties of semiconductor materials.
Appointed professor in Physics at EPFL in October 1993, his research team studies the physics of ultrafast processes in semiconductor micro and nanostructures and in devices that use them. He has been the Director the Institute of Micro and Optoelectronics since 1998, then of the Institute of Quantum Photonic and Electronics from 2003 to 2008.
His team takes an active part in the "Quantum Photonics" National Center of Competence in Research, of which he was the Deputy Director from 2001 to 2005 then the Director from July 2005 till the end of the NCCR in 2013
From 2008 till 2014 he has been Dean for Research at EPFL and president of the research commission.
Starting in 2014, he has been head of Physics, till his departure from EPFL in 2017.
He has been a divisional editor of Physical Review Letters from 2001 to 2007.
John Richard ThomeJohn R. Thome is Professor of Heat and Mass Transfer at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland since 1998, where his primary interests of research are two-phase flow and heat transfer, covering both macro-scale and micro-scale heat transfer and enhanced heat transfer. He directs the Laboratory of Heat and Mass Transfer (LTCM) at the EPFL with a research staff of about 18-20 and is also Director of the Doctoral School in Energy. He received his Ph.D. at Oxford University, England in 1978. He is the author of four books: Enhanced Boiling Heat Transfer (1990), Convective Boiling and Condensation, 3rd Edition (1994), Wolverine Engineering Databook III (2004) and Nucleate Boiling on Micro-Structured Surfaces (2008). He received the ASME Heat Transfer Division's Best Paper Award in 1998 for a 3-part paper on two-phase flow and flow boiling heat transfer published in the Journal of Heat Transfer. He has received the J&E Hall Gold Medal from the U.K. Institute of Refrigeration in February, 2008 for his extensive research contributions on refrigeration heat transfer and more recently the 2010 ASME Heat Transfer Memorial Award. He has published widely on the fundamental aspects of microscale and macroscale two-phase flow and heat transfer and on enhanced boiling and condensation heat transfer.
Jean-Louis ScartezziniDirector of EPFL Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory (1994-present); Founder & Director of ENAC Institute of Infrastructures, Resources and Environment (2002-2009); Founder & Director of EPFL Doctoral Program in Environment (2002-2009); Co-Director of EPFL Institute of Building Technology (1994-1997); Associate Professor of Building Physics at EPFL (1994-1997); Associate Professor of Building Physics at University of Geneva (1990-1997); Group Leader & Research Fellow at the EPFL Solar Energy Research Group (1981-1989); Research Fellow at the Applied Geophysics Institute of University of Lausanne (1980-1981).
Jean-Claude BünzliJean-Claude Bünzli was born in 1944. He earned a degree in chemical engineering in 1968 and a PhD in 1971 (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne) for his work on the kinetic behaviour of Nb and Ta pentachloride adducts. He spent two years at the University of British Columbia as a teaching postdoctoral fellow (photoelectron spectroscopy) and one year at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (physical organic chemistry).
Positions
He was appointed assistant-professor at the University of Lausanne in 1974 and started a research program on the spectrochemical properties of f-elements. He was promoted as a full professor of inorganic and analytical chemistry in 1980. He transferred to EPFL in 2001 where he directed the Laboratory of Lanthanide Supramolecular Chemistry until 2010.
From 2009 to 2013, he was World Class University Professor at Korea University (South Korea) helping developing a new research center for photovoltaics. In 20154-2015 he acted as visiting professor at FJIRSM (Fuzhou, Fujian), a laboratory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He presently holds the Dr Kennedy Wong Distinguished Visiting Professorship at Hong Kong Baptist University (3 months/year) and a position as Distinguished Scholar at University of Technology, Sydney (NSW, Australia, 1 month/year).
Administrative and reviewer duties
He acted as the elected Dean of the Faculty of Sciences (1990-1991) and as one of the elected Vice-Rectors of the University (1991-1995), in charge of students' affairs and of research programs in the field of biomedical sciences. He held a position of invited professor at the Université Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg in 1996 and at the Science University of Tokyo in 1998. In 1989, he founded the European Rare Earths and Actinide Society which coordinate international conferences in the field (cf. http://ereswww.epfl.ch).
He served as a World Bank Project Specialist within the framework of the Chinese Provincial Universities Development Project (Northwest China, 1989) and as a member of a Panel in charge of evaluating chemical research at Norwegian universities (1997). In 2001, he was hired as "Peer leader" for the evaluation of the Swiss universities of applied sciences. In 2005, he acted as a member of the "Physical Inorganic Panel" of the Science Foundation of Ireland and in 2006 he was nominated to the "Chemistry Panel" of the same foundation.
He is a member of the Editorial Board of Spectroscopy Letters, associate editor-in-chief of the Journal of Rare Earths, and senior editor of the Handbook on the Physics and Chemistry of Rare Earths (54 volumes published to date).
Teaching
Regarding teaching, he has directed the joint project of the universities of Geneva, Lausanne, Neuchâtel and Fribourg "General chemistry for students enrolled in a life sciences curriculum", within the frame of the "Swiss virtual campus", a program sponsored by the Conference of Swiss universities and the Swiss federal office for science and education (2000-2004). Web site: http://chimge@epfl.ch
Research
His research is centered on lanthanide luminescent molecular and supramolecular edifices, with main applications in biology & medicine. He is the author or the co-author of 350 research papers, 260 contributed communications and has presented 285 invited conferences, seminars, and courses. He has collected >22800 citations (h-index 72). Wolf Hendrik HuwaldDr. Hendrik Huwald is a scientist at the Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences (CRYOS) and a lecturer at the Environmental Sciences and Engineering Section (SSIE) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He completed his PhD in 2003 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ), developing a numerical model for sea ice and studying energy transfer processes in the Arctic. Between 2005 and 2012 he was a post-doctoral fellow and scientist at the Laboratory of Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology (EFLUM) of EPFL working on Alpine snow-atmosphere interaction, and energy balance-related research mainly in mountain regions. During this time, he designed, led and participated in numerous large field experiments in different environments. In 2013 he joined the newly founded CRYOS laboratory where he conducted research in the domains of snow science, hydrology, boundary layer meteorology and environmental sensing. He has extensive experience with project management both on national and international level.
