Andreas MortensenAndreas Mortensen is currently Professor and Director of the Institute of Materials at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where he heads the Laboratory for Mechanical Metallurgy. He joined the faculty of EPFL 1997 after ten years, from 1986 to 1996, as a member of the faculty of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he held the successive titles of ALCOA Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor. His research is focussed on the processing, microstructural development and mechanical behavior of advanced metallic materials with particular focus on metal matrix composites and metal foams, on infiltration processing and capillarity, and on damage and fracture in metallic materials. He is author or co-author of two monographs, around one hundred and eighty scientific or technical publications and twelve patents. Born in San Francisco in 1957, of dual (Danish and US) nationality, Andreas Mortensen graduated in 1980 from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris with a Diplôme dIngénieur Civil, and earned his Ph.D. in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at MIT in 1986. Besides his academic employment, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Nippon Steel during part of 1986, and was invited professor at the Ecole des Mines in Paris during the academic year 1995 to 1996. He is a member of the editorial committee of International Materials Reviews and has co-edited four books. He is a Fellow of ASM, a recipient of the Howe Medal and the Grossman Award of the American Society of Metals, was awarded the Péchiney Prize by the French Academy of Sciences and the Res Metallica Chair from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, received three EPFL teaching awards, is one of ISIs Highly Cited authors for Materials Science since 2002 and was awarded an ERC advanced grant in 2012.
Lukas KühnLukas Kühn graduated in biochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. He received his PhD in 1979 for a thesis with Jean-Pierre Kraehenbuhl at the University of Lausanne. After postdoctoral work in Lausanne and with Frank Ruddle at Yale University, USA, he became group leader at ISREC in 1984, was promoted senior scientist in 1988 and EPFL Adjunct Professor (professeur titulaire) in June 2008.
César PulgarinProf. C. Pulgarin is Chemist from Lausanne University, Master in environmental chemistry from Geneva University, Ph D in synthesis bio-inspired of natural substances from Neuchâtel University. During his education he carried out several industrial trainings.
Since March 1989, he has been working at the EPFL where he is leader of the Advanced Oxidation Processes Group (GPAO) active in the development chemical, photochemical, electrochemical, ultrasonic processes, their coupling between them and with biological systems to degrade chemical and microbiological pollutants in water and air. He has an H index of 40 and he is the world most cited author in 1) TiO2 photo-assisted bacterial inactivation in water and 2) Coupling of photochemical and biological processes for pollutant degradation. He has been involved in ten African, South American and European international research projects. He has been Swiss representative in COST program 540.
Karen ScrivenerDe nationalité anglaise, Karen Scrivener est née en 1958. Au cours de sa carrière, ses travaux et sa recherche traitaient des domaines suivants: Identification du développement microstucturale pendant l'hydratation du ciment. Elaboration d'une approche multitechnique pour étudier la microstucture des ciments et bétons, avec accent sur la quantification par analyse des images d'électrons retrodiffusés. Caractérisation de l'auréole de transition de la pâte de ciment autour des granulats. Compréhension des processus de dégardation des bétons, en particulier le gonflement lié à la formation de l'éttringite retardée dans les bétons étuvés.
Emmanuel DenariéEmmanuel Denarié is a civil engineer, with a PhD in Materials Science. He worked for 3 years in a civil engineering company where he was in charge of the design of structures and the maintenance of bridges. He has 30 years’ experience on research and applications in the field of building materials, advanced concretes, and rehabilitation of reinforced concrete structures. He is since 2000 senior scientist and lecturer in the Laboratory for Maintenance and Safety of structures, at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), in charge of research and development activities on the application of concretes and advanced cementitious materials to the improvement of existing and new structures. In 2013, under the lead of Emmanuel Denarié, in cooperation with CEREMA, Subdivision des Phares et Balises from Lorient, and Lafarge, a turret at sea (Le Cabon, Brittany, France) was reinforced by a cast on site 60 mm thick UHPFRC shell. The strain hardening mix was developed jointly with Lafarge. This successful application in extreme conditions of access and restraint of the substrate (thin ring geometry) opened the way to large-scale industrial applications of UHPFRC for the reinforcement of existing structures.
Xile HuXile Hu was born in 1978 in Putian, southeastern China. He entered the Peking University in Beijing in 1996. Besides learning too little chemistry, his biggest regret in the college was not able to correct his southern accent in Mandarin. After graduated from PKU, he went to the United States and began his doctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego. In December 2004, he finished with a Ph.D. in chemistry and some fond memories of the beautiful city of San Diego. He then moved to the Los Angeles area and become a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology. There he enjoyed numerous stimulating scientific (and other) discussions with friends and colleagues. He also made plenty of friends outside the campus and was a frequent in many local Chinese restaurants. In 2007, after two pleasant visits to Switzerland, he decided to move across the continent one more time and join the faculty of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He now directs the Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Catalysis and is interested in developing chemistry for synthesis, energy and sustainability.
Julien Maillard2011 - present: Research associate at the Laboratory for Environmental Biotechnology (LBE, IIE-ENAC, EPFL)
2007 - 2010: Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory for Environmental Biotechnology (LBE, IIE-ENAC, EPFL)
2005 - 2006: Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of East Anglia (UEA, Norwich, UK)
2000 - 2004: PhD thesis at the Laboratory for Environmental Biotechnology (LBE)
1995 - 2000: B.sc & M.sc at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology, Zurich (ETHZ)
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.