Johan AuwerxJohan Auwerx is Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he occupies the Nestle Chair in Energy Metabolism. Dr. Auwerx has been using molecular physiology and systems genetics to understand metabolism in health, aging and disease. Much of his work focused on understanding how diet, exercise and hormones control metabolism through changing the expression of genes by altering the activity of transcription factors and their associated cofactors. His work was instrumental for the development of agonists of nuclear receptors - a particular class of transcription factors - into drugs, which now are used to treat high blood lipid levels, fatty liver, and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Auwerx was amongst the first to recognize that transcriptional cofactors, which fine-tune the activity of transcription factors, act as energy sensors/effectors that influence metabolic homeostasis. His research validated these cofactors as novel targets to treat metabolic diseases, and spurred the clinical use of natural compounds, such as resveratrol, as modulators of these cofactor pathways.
Johan Auwerx was elected as a member of EMBO in 2003 and is the recipient of a dozen of international scientific prizes, including the Danone International Nutrition Award, the Oskar Minkowski Prize, and the Morgagni Gold Medal. His work is highly cited by his peers with a h-factor of over 100. He is an editorial board member of several journals, including Cell Metabolism, Molecular Systems Biology, The EMBO Journal, Journal of Cell Biology, Cell, and Science. Dr. Auwerx co-founded a handful of biotech companies, including Carex, PhytoDia, and most recently Mitobridge, and has served on several scientific advisory boards.
Dr. Auwerx received both his MD and PhD in Molecular Endocrinology at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium. He was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Jiancheng YangI am a 4th-year PhD student in the Department of Electronic Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, advised by Prof. Bingbing Ni. I received BEng and MEng degree in the Department of Automation from the same university. Enrolled in a double master degree program, I spent 2 years in France with an Engineer degree. I was a visiting research fellow in Visual Computing Group at Harvard University. I am now visiting EPFL CVLAB, working with Prof. Pascal Fua.I focus on medical image analysis, 3D computer vision and trustworthy machine learning, with a clinical emphasis on lung cancer and thoracic diseases. I have (co-)first-authored more than 10 papers on top-tier journals / conferences, e.g., Cancer Research, CVPR, MICCAI and NeurIPS. I was a reviewer for more than 10 prestigious venues, a top-ranking participant for several AI competitions, and the lead organizer for MICCAI 2020 RibFrac Challenge.Updated on April, 2021.
