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).
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.
Paul MuraltPaul Muralt received a diploma in experimental physics in 1978 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH in Zurich. He accomplished his Ph.D. thesis in the field of commensurate-incommensurate phase transitions at the Solid State Laboratory of ETH. In the years 1984 and 1985 he held a post doctoral position at the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich where he pioneered the application of scanning tunneling microscopy to surface potential imaging. In 1987, after a stay at the Free University of Berlin, he joined the Balzers group in Liechtenstein. He specialized in sputter deposition techniques, and managed since 1991 a department for development and applications of Physical Vapor Deposition and PECVD processes. In 1993, he joined the Ceramics Laboratory of EPFL in Lausanne. AS group leader for thin films and MEMS devices, he specialized in piezoelectric and pyroelectric MEMS with mostly Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 and AlN thin film. His research interests are in thin film growth in general, and more specifically in property assessment of small ferroelectric structures, in integration issues of ferroelectric and other polar materials, property-microstructure relationships, and applications of polar materials in semiconductor and micro-electro-mechanical devices. More recently he extended his interests to oxide thin films of ionic conductors. The focus in piezoelectric thin films was directed towards AlN-ScN alloys. He gives lectures in thin film processing, micro fabrication, and surface analysis. He authored or co-authored more than 230 scientific articles. He became Fellow of IEEE in 2013. In 2005, he received an outstanding achievement award at the International Symposium on Integrated Ferroelectrics (ISIF), and in 2016 the B.C. Sawyer Memorial award.
Chairman of the International Workshops on Piezoelectric MEMS(http://www.piezomems2011.org/) Alfredo PasquarelloAlfredo Pasquarello studied physics at the
Scuola Normale Superiore
of Pisa and at the University of Pisa, obtaining their respective degrees in 1986. He obtained a doctoral degree at the EPFL in 1991 with a thesis on
Multiphoton Transitions in Solids
. Then, he moved to Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill (New Jersey), where he carried out postdoctoral research on the magnetic properties of carbon fullerenes. In 1993, he joined the Institute for Numerical Research in the Physics of Materials (IRRMA), where his activity involved first-principles simulation methods. In 1998, he was awarded the EPFL Latsis Prize for his research work on disordered silica materials. Succeeding in grant programs of the Swiss National Science Foundation, he then set up his own research group at IRRMA. In July 2003, he is appointed Professor in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics at EPFL. Currently, he leads the Chair of Atomic Scale Simulation.
Stefano MischlerStefano Mischler obtained the diploma in materials science in 1983 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETHZ in Zurich. He accomplished his PhD thesis in the field of surface analysis and corrosion at the Materials department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL in Lausanne in 1988. In the years 1989-1990 he held a postdoctoral position at the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Establishment in Harwell (Oxfordshire) where he developed novel quantification procedures for Auger Electron Spectroscopy and high lateral resolution surface analytical methods for fiber reinforced ceramics. In 1991 he joined the newly created Tribology group at the Laboratory for Metallurgical Chemistry of the EPFL where he developed research activities in the field of wear-corrosion interactions (tribocorrosion) and of tribological coatings. He is currently head of the tribology group and is developing a reserach and training activity devoted to modern aspects of tribology and surface science and technology, including surface chemical effects in tribology, biotribology and biocorrosion, tribology in microfabrication processes and wear protection methods. In 2006 he spent a sabbatical leave of 3 months at the Tokyo Medical and Dental University, Institute of Biomaterials.
Roland LogéRoland Logé is an associate professor at EPFL, with a primary affiliation to the Materials Institute, and a secondary affiliation to the Microengineering Institute.
After graduating in 1994 at UCL (Belgium) in Materials Engineering, he earned a Master of Science in Mechanics in 1995, at UCSB Santa Barbara (USA). He received his PhD at Mines Paristech-CEMEF (France) in 1999, where he specialized in metal forming and associated microstructure evolutions. After a postdoc at Cornell University (USA) between 1999 and 2001, he entered CNRS in France.
In 2008, he was awarded the ALCAN prize from the French Academy of Sciences, together with Yvan Chastel.
In 2009 he became head of the Metallurgy-Structure-Rheology research group at CEMEF.
In 2011, he launched a “Groupement de Recherche” (GDR), funded by CNRS, networking most of the researchers in France involved in recrystallization and grain growth.
In 2013, he became Research Director at CNRS.
In March 2014 he joined EPFL as the head of the Laboratory of Thermomechanical Metallurgy.
