Gervais ChapuisClick here for a more complete biography
Studies at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), Switzerland. After graduating in crystallography in 1966, he prepared his PhD thesis in the same institution under the direction of Prof.. A. Niggli which he obtained in 1972. For three years he continued his research at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in California in the laboratory of Prof. D. H. Templeton, a well-known specialist in the field of resonant scattering. Back in Switzerland, he joined the newly created Institute of Crystallography at the University of Lausanne under the direction of Prof.. D. Schwarzenbach. In 1991 he was appointed full professor and in 1999, director of the Institute of crystallography. In 2003, his unit was transferred to the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne (EPFL) where he was appointed professor.
G. Chapuis has chaired numerous committees in national and international organisations in the field of crystallography. In particular, he chaired the committee of aperiodic structures of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr). He is also a member of the Education Committee of that organization. He also chaired the Swiss Society of Crystallography.
G. Chapuis is co-editor of the Journal Acta Crystallographica and participates in many committees for various readings of academic journals devoted to crystallography and solid state physics.
His research areas cover more specifically the theoretical and experimental study of aperiodic structures, especially incommensurate structures by diffraction and molecular dynamics. He is the author of over two hundred scientific papers published in international peer-reviewed journals. Moreover G. Chapuis is dedicated to the development of interactive teaching in crystallography using new communication technologies available on the Internet.
Dragan DamjanovicDragan Damjanovic received BSc diploma in Physics from the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Mathematics, University of Sarajevo, in 1980, and PhD in Ceramics Science from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Earth and Mineral Sciences, the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) in 1987. From 1988 to 1991 he was a research associate in the Materials Research Laboratory at the PSU. He joined the Ceramics Laboratory, Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne in 1991. He is currently a "professeur titulaire", heads the Group for Ferroelectrics and Functional Oxides at the Institute of Materials and teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on structure and electrical properties of materials. The research activities include fundamental and applied investigations of piezoelectric, ferroelectric and dielectric properties of a broad class of materials.
Cécile HébertCécile Hébert was born in France in 1970. She obtained her Ingeneer degree (physics) and her PhD degree (design of a new energy filter for transmission electron microscopy, under the direction of Prof. B. Jouffrey) at the Ecole Centrale in Paris.
As a post doc with Prof. P. Schattschneider, she was working on the calculation of the fine structure of ionisation edges in EELS. As a research assistant at the Vienna University of Technology, she was one of the main participant to the CHIRALTEM project dealing with the measurement of magnetic circular dichroism in the electron microscope.
Christophe BallifChristophe Ballif is director of the Phototovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratoryb) (PV-Lab at the institute of microengineering (IMT) in Neuchâtel (part of the EPFL since 2009). The lab focus is on the science and technology of high efficiency heterojunction crystalline cells,so-called passivating contacts for solar cells, multi-junction solar cells include novel generation Perovskite on innovative optical high speed detector and on various macroelectronics application. It also deals with energy management with a focus on integration of solar electricity into the energy system. The PV-Lab has strongly contributed to technology transfer and industrialization of novel devices and full technology with numerous companies. Christophe Ballif graduated as a physicist from the EPFL in 1994, where he also obtained in 1998 his Phd degree working on novel PV materials. He accomplished his postdoctoral research at NREL (Golden, US) on compound semiconductor solar cells (CIGS and CdTe). He worked then at the Fraunhofer ISE (Ge) on crystalline silicon photovoltaics (monocrystalline and multi-crystalline) until 2003 and then at the EMPA in Thun (CH) before becoming full professor at the University of Neuchâtel IMT in 2004, taking over the chair of Prof. A. Shah. Since 2013, C.Ballif is also the director of the new CSEM PV-Center, also located in Neuchâtel. The CSEM PV-Center is focussing more on industrialisation and technology transfer in the field of solar energy, including solar electricity management and storage. At the core of the CSEM PV-center activities lies several "pilot lines" for various kinds of solar cells manufacturing, with a focus coating technologies, wet chemistry processes for crystalline silicon, metalisation techniques for solar cells, and a platform for developing "ideal packaging solutions and polymers" for PV modules. In addition, joined facitilites between CSEM and EPFL of over 800 m2 are available for modules manufacturing, measuring and accelerated aging. CSEM PV-center has also full team dedicated to storage and energy systems and operates a joined center with BFH in Biel for research on electrochemical storage. He (co-) authored over 500 journal and technical papers, as well as several patents. He is an elected member of the SATW, member of the scientific council of the Swiss AEE, and member of the board of the EPFL Energy center. In 2016, he recieved the Becquerel prize for his contributions to the field of high efficiency photovoltaics.
Duncan Thomas Lindsay AlexanderDuncan Alexander graduated with a PhD in Materials Science and Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge in 2003 for a thesis on the kinetics of metallurgical phase transformations under the direction of Lindsay Greer. From 2003 to 2007 he held a Royal Society Overseas Research Fellowship at the University of Sydney, and then post-doctoral positions at the University of Cambridge and Arizona State University, working first on materials electrochemistry with Carsten Schwandt and Derek Fray, and then the characterization of atmospheric aerosol particles with Peter Crozier and Jim Anderson. In 2007 he came to EPFL as a scientific collaborator in the group of László Forró, and from 2008 to 2017 he was a staff scientist at EPFL’s Interdisciplinary Centre for Electron Microscopy (CIME), specializing in the application of advanced transmission electron microscopy techniques and enabling electron microscopy research activities for groups across EPFL through teaching, training and support. In 2018 he joined the Electron Spectrometry and Microscopy Laboratory (LSME) as a full-time research scientist dedicated to advancing transmission electron microscopy techniques, and was promoted to the status of Research and Teaching Associate. In 2019, together with LSME director Cécile Hébert, he launched the first MOOC on transmission electron microscopy for materials science: https://www.coursera.org/learn/microscopy/For a complete list of peer-reviewed publications, see:https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4350-8587 Nava SetterNava Setter completed MSc in Civil Engineering in the Technion (Israel) and PhD in Solid State Science in Penn. State University (USA) (1980). After post-doctoral work at the Universities of Oxford (UK) and Geneva (Switzerland), she joined an R&D institute in Haifa (Israel) where she became the head of the Electronic Ceramics Lab (1988). She began her affiliation with EPFL in 1989 as the Director of the Ceramics Laboratory, becoming Full Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in 1992. She had been Head of the Materials Department in the past and more recently has served as the Director of the Doctoral School for Materials.
Research at the Ceramics Laboratory, which Nava Setter directs, concerns the science and technology of functional ceramics focusing on piezoelectric and related materials: ferroelectrics, dielectrics, pyroelectrics and also ferromagnetics. The work includes fundamental and applied research and covers the various scales from the atoms to the final devices. Emphasis is given to micro- and nano-fabrication technology with ceramics and coupled theoretical and experimental studies of the functioning of ferroelectrics.
Her own research interests include ferroelectrics and piezoelectrics: in particular the effects of interfaces, finite-size and domain-wall phenomena, as well as structure-property relations and the pursuit of new applications. The leading thread in her work over the years has been the demonstration of how basic or fundamental concepts in materials - particularly ferroelectrics - can be utilized in a new way and/or in new types of devices. She has published over 450 scientific and technical papers.
Nava Setter is a Fellow of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and the World Academy of Ceramics. Among the awards she received are the Swiss-Korea Research Award, the ISIF outstanding achievement award, and the Ferroelectrics-IEEE recognition award. In 2010 her research was recognized by the European Union by the award of an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant. Recently she received the IEEE-UFFC Achievement Award (2011),the W.R. Buessem Award(2011), the Robert S. Sosman Award Lecture (American Ceramics Society) (2013), and the American Vacuum Society Recognition for Excellence in Leadership (2013).