Jean-Jacques MeisterA Swiss citizen, Jean-Jacques Meister was born in 1950. He received a diploma in electrical engineering, then a diploma in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He joined the Institute of Biomedical Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich and obtained a PhD in1983. From 1984 to 1990, he worked in different areas of biophysics and biomedical engineering. His main contributions concern novel noninvasive methods for the prevention and diagnosis of cardiovascular diseases: mechanical properties of the arterial wall, arterial hemodynamics, and Doppler ultrasonography. In 1990, he was recruited as a full professor of experimental physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. He was director of the laboratory of biomedical engineering until 2001, then director of the laboratory of cell biophysics. His fields of research are cellular biophysics: cytoskeleton dynamics, motility & adhesion of cells and calcium dynamics in smooth muscle cells. He spent a sabbatical leave in 2000 at the famous Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts -USA to improve his skills in molecular and cellular biology. His teaching activities include courses in general physics, Newtonian mechanics, biomedical engineering and biophysics presented to undergraduate and graduate EPFL students in physics and engineering. He is author or co-author of more than 230 scientific papers & book chapters and 8 international patents.
Carl PetersenCarl Petersen studied physics as a bachelor student in Oxford (1989-1992). During his PhD studies under the supervision of Prof. Sir Michael Berridge in Cambridge (1992-1996), he investigated cellular and molecular mechanisms of calcium signalling. In his first postdoctoral period (1996-1998), he joined the laboratory of Prof. Roger Nicoll at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) to investigate synaptic transmission and plasticity in the hippocampus. During a second postdoctoral period, in the laboratory of Prof. Bert Sakmann at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg (1999-2003), he began working on the primary somatosensory barrel cortex, investigating cortical circuits and sensory processing. Carl Petersen joined the Brain Mind Institute of the Faculty of Life Sciences at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 2003, setting up the Laboratory of Sensory Processing to investigate the functional operation of neuronal circuits in awake mice during quantified behavior. In 2019, Carl Petersen became the Director of the EPFL Brain Mind Institute, with the goal to promote quantitative multidisciplinary research into neural structure, function, dysfunction, computation and therapy through technological advances.
Emre TelatarI. Emre Telatar received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey, in 1986. He received the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in 1988 and 1992 respectively. In 1992, he joined the Communications Analysis Research Department at AT&T Bell Laboratories (later Lucent Technologies), Murray Hill, NJ. He has been at the EPFL since 2000.
Emre Telatar was the recipient of the IEEE Information Theory Society Paper Award in 2001. He was a program co-chair for the IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory in 2002, and associate editor for Shannon Theory for the IEEE Information Theory Transactions from 2001 to 2004. He was awarded the EPFL Agepoly teaching prize in 2005.
Emre Telatar's research interests are in communication and information theories.
Horst VogelHorst Vogel est né en 1948 à Würzburg, Allemagne. Après ses études en chimie, il obtient le diplôme de chimie en 1974 de l'Université de Würzburg.Il entreprend ensuite un travail de doctorat au Max-Planck Institut für Biophysikalische Chemie de Göttingen, et obtient en 1978 le grade de docteur ès sciences de l'Université de Göttingen. De 1978 à 1983 il effectue des recherches au Max-Planck Institut für Biologie à Tübingen et en 1984, il rejoint le Biocentre à Bâle où il travaille jusqu'en 1989, effectuant une année au Karolinska Institute à Stockholm. En 1989, Horst Vogel rejoint l'institut de chimie physique de l'EPFL où il dirige un groupe travaillant dans les domaines de la biophysique et de la bioélectronique.
Depuis le 1er octobre 1994 il est profeseur en chimie physique des polymères et membranes au Département de chimie de EPFL. Ses intérêts de recherche sont l'étude de la structure et de la dynamique de récepteurs membranaires et l'auto-assemblage des biomolécules aux interfaces pour développer de nouveaux biocapteurs dans le domaine de micro- et nanotechnologie. Il enseigne les sciences du vivant, la biophysique et biochimie, et des chapitres concernant la biotechnologie.
Dipl. in Chemistry1974-Univ. Würzburg, DE
Ph.D.-1978-MPI für Biophys. Chemie, Göttingen, DE
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)
Henry MarkramHenry Markram started a dual scientific and medical career at the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. His scientific work in the 80s revealed the polymodal receptive fields of pontomedullary reticular formation neurons in vivo and how acetylcholine re-organized these sensory maps.
He moved to Israel in 1988 and obtained his PhD at the Weizmann Institute where he discovered a link between acetylcholine and memory mechanisms by being the first to show that acetylcholine modulates the NMDA receptor in vitro studies, and thereby gates which synapses can undergo synaptic plasticity. He was also the first to characterize the electrical and anatomical properties of the cholinergic neurons in the medial septum diagonal band.
He carried out a first postdoctoral study as a Fulbright Scholar at the NIH, on the biophysics of ion channels on synaptic vesicles using sub-fractionation methods to isolate synaptic vesicles and patch-clamp recordings to characterize the ion channels. He carried out a second postdoctoral study at the Max Planck Institute, as a Minerva Fellow, where he discovered that individual action potentials propagating back into dendrites also cause pulsed influx of Ca2 into the dendrites and found that sub-threshold activity could also activated a low threshold Ca2 channel. He developed a model to show how different types of electrical activities can divert Ca2 to activate different intracellular targets depending on the speed of Ca2 influx an insight that helps explain how Ca2 acts as a universal second messenger. His most well known discovery is that of the millisecond watershed to judge the relevance of communication between neurons marked by the back-propagating action potential. This phenomenon is now called Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP), which many laboratories around the world have subsequently found in multiple brain regions and many theoreticians have incorporated as a learning rule. At the Max-Planck he also started exploring the micro-anatomical and physiological principles of the different neurons of the neocortex and of the mono-synaptic connections that they form - the first step towards a systematic reverse engineering of the neocortical microcircuitry to derive the blue prints of the cortical column in a manner that would allow computer model reconstruction.
He received a tenure track position at the Weizmann Institute where he continued the reverse engineering studies and also discovered a number of core principles of the structural and functional organization such as differential signaling onto different neurons, models of dynamic synapses with Misha Tsodyks, the computational functions of dynamic synapses, and how GABAergic neurons map onto interneurons and pyramidal neurons. A major contribution during this period was his discovery of Redistribution of Synaptic Efficacy (RSE), where he showed that co-activation of neurons does not only alter synaptic strength, but also the dynamics of transmission. At the Weizmann, he also found the tabula rasa principle which governs the random structural connectivity between pyramidal neurons and a non-random functional connectivity due to target selection. Markram also developed a novel computation framework with Wolfgang Maass to account for the impact of multiple time constants in neurons and synapses on information processing called liquid computing or high entropy computing.
In 2002, he was appointed Full professor at the EPFL where he founded and directed the Brain Mind Institute. During this time Markram continued his reverse engineering approaches and developed a series of new technologies to allow large-scale multi-neuron patch-clamp studies. Markrams lab discovered a novel microcircuit plasticity phenomenon where connections are formed and eliminated in a Darwinian manner as apposed to where synapses are strengthening or weakened as found for LTP. This was the first demonstration that neural circuits are constantly being re-wired and excitation can boost the rate of re-wiring.
At the EPFL he also completed the much of the reverse engineering studies on the neocortical microcircuitry, revealing deeper insight into the circuit design and built databases of the blue-print of the cortical column. In 2005 he used these databases to launched the Blue Brain Project. The BBP used IBMs most advanced supercomputers to reconstruct a detailed computer model of the neocortical column composed of 10000 neurons, more than 340 different types of neurons distributed according to a layer-based recipe of composition and interconnected with 30 million synapses (6 different types) according to synaptic mapping recipes. The Blue Brain team built dozens of applications that now allow automated reconstruction, simulation, visualization, analysis and calibration of detailed microcircuits. This Proof of Concept completed, Markrams lab has now set the agenda towards whole brain and molecular modeling.
With an in depth understanding of the neocortical microcircuit, Markram set a path to determine how the neocortex changes in Autism. He found hyper-reactivity due to hyper-connectivity in the circuitry and hyper-plasticity due to hyper-NMDA expression. Similar findings in the Amygdala together with behavioral evidence that the animal model of autism expressed hyper-fear led to the novel theory of Autism called the Intense World Syndrome proposed by Henry and Kamila Markram. The Intense World Syndrome claims that the brain of an Autist is hyper-sensitive and hyper-plastic which renders the world painfully intense and the brain overly autonomous. The theory is acquiring rapid recognition and many new studies have extended the findings to other brain regions and to other models of autism.
Markram aims to eventually build detailed computer models of brains of mammals to pioneer simulation-based research in the neuroscience which could serve to aggregate, integrate, unify and validate our knowledge of the brain and to use such a facility as a new tool to explore the emergence of intelligence and higher cognitive functions in the brain, and explore hypotheses of diseases as well as treatments.
Nikolaos StergiopoulosEducation
MTE, Managing the Technology Enterprise Program (2000), IMD, Lausanne
Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering & Engineering Mechanics (1990) Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.
MS in Biomedical Engineering (1987) Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.
Diploma in Mechanical Engineering (1985) National Technical University of Athens.
Professional Activities
2002 - present: Professor and director of LHTC
2010 - present: Founder and director of Rheon Medical SA, Préverenges, Switzerland
2008 - present: Founder and director of Antlia S.A., PSE-C, EPFL campus, Switzerland
1998 - 2007: Founder and Scientific Director of EndoArt S.A., Lausanne, Switzerland
1996 - 2002: Assistant professor at the Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland.
1991 - 1996: Research Associate at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Lausanne
1990 - 1991: Lecturer, Iowa State University
Peter RyserDr. Peter Ryser is a Professor Emeritus at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne. He has over three decades of research and teaching experience from various corporate and academic institutions. He was previously a Director at Siemens Building Technologies where he was responsible for R&D, product innovation and patents. Dr. Ryser has a Ph.D. in applied Physics from the University of Geneva, a Masters degree in Experimental Physics and an MBA.
Philippe RenaudPhilippe Renaud is Professor at the Microsystem Laboratory (LMIS4) at EPFL. He is also the scientific director of the EPFL Center of MicroNanoTechnology (CMI). His main research area is related to micronano technologies in biomedical applications (BioMEMS) with emphasis on cell-chips, nanofluidics and bioelectronics. Ph. Renaud is invloved in many scientifics papers in his research area. He received his diploma in physics from the University of Neuchâtel (1983) and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Lausanne (1988). He was postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Berkeley (1988-89) and then at the IBM Zürich Research Laboratory in Switzerland (1990-91). In 1992, he joined the Sensors and Actuators group of the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) at Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was appointed assistant professor at EPFL in 1994 and full professor in 1997. In summer 1996, he was visiting professor at the Tohoku University, Japan. Ph. Renaud is active in several scientific committee (scientific journals, international conferences, scientific advisory boards of companies, PhD thesis committee). He is also co-founder of the Nanotech-Montreux conference. Ph. Renaud is committed to valorization of basic research through his involvement in several high-tech start-up companies.
