Anders MeibomAnders Meibom obtained his PhD in physics from the University of Southern Denmark in 1997. This was followed by two and a half years of PostDoc work at the Hawaii Institute for Geophysics and Planetology, where he conducted mineralogical studies of primitive chondritic meteorites. From 2000 to 2005, he was Research Associate in the Geological & Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, where he represented Stanford in the USGS-Stanford ion microprobe laboratory. In 2005, he became proifessor at the Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle in Paris. From 2006 to 2011 he was the director of the French national NanoSIMS laboratory. Since January 2012, he is professor at the EPFL in the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC). From April 2014, he is professor ad personam at the Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Lausanne.
Lyesse LalouiDirector, EPFL Soil Mechanics LaboratoryDirector, EPFL Civil Engineering SectionEditor in Chief, ElsevierMember of the Swiss Academy of Engineering SciencesFounding Partner, Geoeg & MeduSoilActive in academic research in the following institutions: Lausanne, EPFL, Durham, Duke University, Nanjing, Hohai UniversityProfessor Lyesse Laloui teaches at EPFL, where he directs the Soil Mechanics Laboratory as well as the Civil Engineering Section. He is a founding partner of the international engineering company Geoeg, and the start-up MeduSoil. In addition, he is an adjunct professor at Duke University, USA and an advisory professor at Hohai University, China as well as honorary director of the International Joint Research Center for Energy Geotechnics in China.He is the recipient of an Advance ERC grant for his BIO-mediated GEO-material Strengthening project. Editor in Chief of the Elsevier Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment journal, he is a leading scientist in the field of geomechanics and geo-energy. He has written and edited 13 books and published over 320 peer reviewed papers; his work is cited more than 6000 times with an h-index of 39 (Scopus). Two of his papers are among the top 1% in the academic field of Engineering. He has given keynote and invited lectures at more than 40 leading international conferences. He has received several international awards (IACMAG, RM Quigley, Roberval) and delivered honorary lectures (Vardoulakis, Minnesota; G.A. Leonards, Purdue; Kersten, Minnesota). He recently acted as the Chair of the international evaluation panel of Civil and Geological Engineering R&D Units of Portugal.Nov. 2019 For further information visit www.epfl.ch/labs/lms/ ; geoeg.net ; medusoil.com Philippe GilletPhilippe GILLET completed his undergraduate studies in Earth Science at Ecole normale supérieure de la rue dUlm (Paris). In 1983 he obtained a PhD in Geophysics at Université de Paris VII and joined Université de Rennes I as an assistant. Having obtained a State Doctorate in 1988, he became a Professor at this same university, which he left in 1992 to join Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon.
The first part of his research career was devoted to the formation of mountain ranges particularly of the Alps. In parallel, he developed experimental techniques (diamond anvil cells) to recreate the pressure and temperature prevailing deep inside planets in the lab. These experiments aim at understanding what materials make up the unreachable depths of planets in the solar system.
In 1997, Gillet started investigating extraterrestrial matter. He was involved in describing meteorites coming from Mars, the moon or planets which have disappeared today and explaining how these were expelled from their original plant by enormous shocks which propelled them to Earth. He also participated in the NASA Stardust program and contributed to identify comet grains collected from the tail of Comet Wild 2 and brought back to Earth. These grains represent the initial minerals in our solar system and were formed over 4.5 billion years ago. He has also worked on the following subjects:
Interactions between bacteria and minerals.
Solid to glass transition under pressure.
Experimental techniques: laser-heated diamond anvil cell, Raman spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction with synchrotron facilities, electron microscopy.
Philippe Gillet is also active in science and education management. He was the Director of the CNRS Institut National des Sciences de lUnivers (France), the President of the French synchrotron facility SOLEIL and of the French National Research Agency (2007), and the Director of Ecole normale supérieure de Lyon. Before joining EPFL he was the Chief of Staff of the French Minister of Higher Education and Research.
Selected publications:
Ferroir, T., L. Dubrovinsky, A. El Goresy, A. Simionovici, T. Nakamura, and P. Gillet (2010), Carbon polymorphism in shocked meteorites: Evidence for new natural ultrahard phases, Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 290(1-2), 150-154.
Barrat J.A., Bohn M., Gillet Ph., Yamaguchi A. (2009) Evidence for K-rich terranes on Vesta from impact spherules. Meteoritics & Planetary Science, 44, 359374.
Brownlee D, Tsou P, Aleon J, et al. (2006) Comet 81P/Wild 2 under a microscope. Science, 314, 1711-1716.
Beck P., Gillet Ph., El Goresy A., and Mostefaoui S. (2005) Timescales of shock processes in chondrites and Martian meteorites. Nature 435, 1071-1074.
Blase X., Gillet Ph., San Miguel A. and Mélinon P. (2004) Exceptional ideal strength of carbon clathrates. Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 215505-215509.
Gillet Ph. (2002) Application of vibrational spectroscopy to geology. In Handbook of vibrational spectroscopy, Vol. 4 (ed. J. M. Chalmers and P. R. Griffiths), pp. 1-23. John Wiley & Sons.
Gillet Ph., Chen C., Dubrovinsky L., and El Goresy A. (2000) Natural NaAlSi3O8 -hollandite in the shocked Sixiangkou meteorite. Science 287, 1633-1636.
Dimitrios TerzisDimitrios Terzis received his Civil Engineering diploma from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece in 2014, having spent a year in the ESTP, Paris as an exchange student. In 2017, he graduated with a doctoral degree (PhD) in Mechanics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL). His research, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grant 200021_140246) and a scholarship of Academic Excellence of the Swiss Federal Government (No. 2014.0276), focused on the crystallisation of calcium carbonate in soils. With his thesis, Dimitrios contributed in the fields of advanced material characterisation through microscopy and X-Ray tomography techniques, predictive modelling and full-scale geotechnical applications. He’s the co-inventor of three EPFL patents and the author of more than 10 peer-reviewed publications with an h-index of 6 (Scopus, as of 08/2020). He is the recipient of grants and awards which sum up to over CHF 1 Mn, among which an EPFL Innogrant Fellowship (2018), a Swiss National Science foundation BRIDGE grant (2019) and an Innobooster grant from the Gebert rüf Stiftung. Since 2019 he is the principal lecturer and responsible for the course Innovation for construction and the environment which is part of EPFL's Master's program in Civil Engineering.
Paul BowenDr. P. Bowen after gaining his BSc in Physics at Imperial College (UK), he obtained his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in the field of catalysis from the University of Cambridge, UK, in 1982, He then worked at the BP Research Centre, Sunbury, UK, for 4 years in applied surface sciences before moving to Switzerland and EPFL in 1987. He has been at the Powder Technology Laboratory, in the Materials Institute since its conception in 1988. He has over 190 publications and has written an undergraduate book on ceramic synthesis and processing. Education: 1976-1979 Imperial College of Science and Technology, University of London. B.Sc. Honours in Physics. 1979-1982 Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Cambridge. Certificate of Postgraduate Studies in Chemistry. Thesis: A Mössbauer Study of Some Clay Minerals and their Surfaces. Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry. Thesis: An Iron-57 and Tin-119 Mössbauer Spectroscopic Study of Some Graphite Intercalation Compounds and Carbon Supported Iron Catalysts. Professional Experience: 1983-1986 Research Scientist (Physical Chemist), New Technology Division, British Petroleum Company plc, BP Research Centre, Sunbury on Thames, Middlesex TW16 7LN, England. 1987-1988 Engineer, Ceramics Laboratory, Département des Matériaux, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH - 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. 1988-2008 Research Associate/lecturer, Powder Technology Laboratory (Present) Institute des Matériaux, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, CH - 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland. 1988- 2015 Maitre DEnsiegnement et Recherche (Lecturer & Researcher), Powder Technology Laboratory, Institute des Matériaux, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,CH - 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland 2015 – present Adjunct Professor (Professeur Titulaire), Powder Technology Laboratory (LTP), Materials Institute, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), CH - 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
Philippe BuffatBorn in Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1942. EPUL physics engineer diploma in 1967 and EPFL PhD in physics in 1976. From 1966 he studies at the Experimental Physics Laboratory (Prof. J.P. Borel) the physical properties peculiar to the very small size metal crystals and gets a PhD degree for his thesis "Abaissement de la température de fusion de petits cristaux d'or par effet de taille thermodynamique" (Lowering of the melting temperature of small gold crystals by thermodynamic size effect). In 1971, he starts to develop an electron microscopy facility available to all EPFL students and researchers (nowadays Centre Interdisciplinaire de Microscopie Electronique CIME) that he manages till 2007. In parallel he teaches the principles of electron microscopy and the Experimental methods of physics at the Physics/Basic Sciences School (SB). In addition, he trains a large part of the facility users. Honorary professor BS/EPFL he carries-out a free-lance research at CIME and in collaboration with the Institute of Crystallography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ICRAS, Moscow) and the International Centre of Electron Microscopy for Material Science (IC-EM AGH Krakow) This activity covers all the techniques related to transmission and scanning electron microscopy applied to materials science and solid-state physics. His interest is directed towards the structure of nanocrystals, their size effects and behavior under strong electron irradiation, the phase transitions in perovskites, the characterization of nanophases, multilayer and interface structures of crystalline materials and bioceramics. More recently a large research part has moved to understanding/pointing-out the adequacy between the limits of the instruments and their interpretation means in regard of their use in a multiusers facility with a large turnover and a wide range of materials/structures. He is past-president (2006-2007) of the Société Française des Microscopies (Sfµ), honorary member of the Sfµ and of the Swiss Society of Optics and Microscopy (SSOM).
Jan Van HerleBorn in Antwerp, Belgium. In Switzerland since 1983. Became Swiss citizen in 2004 out of conviction of principles of democracy and bottom-up participation. No double nationality. Village Council Member for 2 five-year mandates in 2006-2016.
1987 : Chemist from Basel University (CH).
1988 : Post-graduate IT diploma from Basel Engineering School.
1989 : Industry internship ABB Baden (CH).
1990-1993 : PhD Thesis EPFL, on Solid Oxide Fuel Cell cathode reaction mechanisms.
1994-1995 : Japanese Postdoctoral Fellowship in Tsukuba, Japan, on ceramic powders.
1995-2000 : Researcher at EPFL, Dpt. Chemistry : project responsible in PPM2 (materials), FP4-BriteEuram, NEDO (Japan), Swiss Gas Union (CH, oxygen membranes).
1998-2000 : Masters in Energy Technology, EPFL.
2000 : Cofounder of HTceramix SA (EPFL spin-off), now based in Yverdon (14 employees). Taken over by SOLIDpower in 2007, now 250 employees with 70 MCHF raised.
2000 : 1st Assistant and lecturer at LENI (STI-IGM) : fuel cell group responsible, projects on biogas (Federal Energy Office), woodgas (CCEM), fuel cell stacking (CTI, FP6, FNS), ceramic separation membranes (COST, FNS), microtubes (STI Seed), stability/lifetime/reliability in fuel cells (Electricité de France, swisselectric research). Currently 4 Ph D theses ongoing, 14 theses concluded, of which 5 colateral with SB and IMX. M.E.R. since Nov 2008.
Total funding raised so far >18 MCHF (50% as main applicant; 30% outside CH; 20% industry).
Scientific output : >135 peer-reviewed publications, >120 conference papers, 40 invited presentations (8 keynotes), >70 granted proposals.
Fluent in 5 languages (Dutch, French, German ( Swiss-german), English, Spanish).