Jamie PaikProf. Jamie Paik is founder and director of the Reconfigurable Robotics Lab (RRL) of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) and a core member of Swiss NCCR robotics group. The RRL leverages expertise in multi-material fabrication and smart material actuation for novel robot designs. She received her PhD in Seoul National University on designing humanoid arm and a hand while being sponsored by Samsung Electronics. This 7-DoF humanoid arm was the lightest in the literature at that time being 3.7kg including the 8-DoF hand. During her Postdoctoral positions in the Institut des Systems Intelligents et de Robotic in Universitat Pierre Marie Curie, Paris VI, she developed laparoscopic tools named JAiMY that are internationally patented and commercialized now by Endocontrol-medical.com. At Harvard University’s Microrobotics Laboratory, she started developing unconventional robots that push the physical limits of material and mechanisms. Her latest research effort is in soft robotics including self-morphing Robogami (robotic origami) that transforms its planar shape to 2D or 3D by folding in predefined patterns and sequences, just like the paper art, origami.
Dario FloreanoProf. Dario Floreano is director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2010, he is the founding director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics, a research program that brings together more than 20 labs across Switzerland. Prof. Floreano holds an M.A. in Vision, an M.S. in Neural Computation, and a PhD in Robotics. He has held research positions at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, at Caltech/JPL, and at Harvard University. His main research interests are Robotics and A.I. at the convergence of biology and engineering. Prof. Floreano made pioneering contributions to the fields of evolutionary robotics, aerial robotics, and soft robotics. He served in numerous advisory boards and committees, including the Future and Emerging Technologies division of the European Commission, the World Economic Forum Agenda Council, the International Society of Artificial Life, the International Neural Network Society, and in the editorial committee of several scientific journals. In addition, he helped spinning off two drone companies (senseFly.com and Flyability.com) and a non-for-profit portal on robotics and A.I. (RoboHub.org). Books
Manuale sulle Reti Neurali, il Mulino (in Italian), 1996 (first edition), 2006 (second edition)Evolutionary Robotics, MIT Press, 2000
Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press, 2008
Flying Insects and Robots, Springer Verlag, 2010
Francesco MondadaDr. Mondada received his M.Sc. in micro-engineering in 1991 and his Doctoral degree in 1997 at EPFL. During his thesis he co-founded the company K-Team, being both CEO and president of the company for about 5 years. He is one of the three main developers of the Khepera robot, considered as a standard in bio-inspired robotics and used by more than 1,000 universities and research centers worldwide. Fully back in research in 2000 and after a short period at CALTECH, he participated to the SWARM-BOTS project as the main developer of the s-bot robot platform, which was ranked on position 39 in the list of The 50 Best Robots Ever (fiction or real) by the Wired Journal in 2006. The SWARM-BOTS project was selected as FET-IST success story by the EU commission. He is author of more than 100 papers in the field of bio-inspired robotics and system level robot design. He is co-editor of several international conference proceedings. In November 2005 he received the EPFL Latsis University prize for his contributions to bio-inspired robotics. In 2011 he received the "Crédit Suisse Award for Best Teaching" from EPFL and in 2012 the "polysphère" award from the students as best teacher in the school of engineering. His interests include the development of innovative mechatronic solutions for mobile and modular robots, the creation of know-how for future embedded applications, and making robot platforms more accessible for education, research, and industrial development.
Yves WeinandBiography
Architect and civil engineer, Prof. Dr. Yves Weinand is one of the most recognised researchers in the field of contemporary wood construction. Founder of the Bureau d'Etude Weinand, he has, since 1996, designed and worked on many emblematic wooden buildings, such as the Saint Loup Chapel, the new Vaudois Parliament or, more recently, the Timber Pavilion of Vidy in Lausanne. His fundamental research questions the technical and static possibilities of wooden materials. The interdisciplinary exploration carried out at the EPFL's Laboratory for Timber Constructions (Ibois), of which he is director, concerns wood in all its aspects, from round wood to manufactured wood. The recent research carried out at Ibois on free structures with wood-wood connections (without screw nor glue) has been the subject of several technological transfers, and stands as tangible proof of new possibilities for wood construction. Yves Weinand is currently working on a large-scale project for a hall for the head office of a joinery in Luxembourg, consisting of a succession of arches with spans of 22.5 to 53.7m, entirely assembled in wood ). Through new innovative approaches, the ambition of his research is to develop a new generation of renewable and ecological wooden construction.He is regularly invited to present his work at international symposia on timber construction.
Fields of expertise
Architectural designTimber structuresDigital FabricationRobotic AssemblyStructural Wood mechanicsIntegrally Attached Timber plate structures
Distinctions
2012 Grand Prix d'Architecture de Wallonie
2014 Best Paper Award, Advances in Architectural Geometry conference. (IBOIS team)
2017 Medal for Research and Technique by the Academy of Architecture. 2018 Mention Régionale, Prix Lignum for the Timber Pavilion of Vidy-Lausanne
2019 "Disctinction Bois 2019" for the Nouveau Parlement vaudois.2019 Grand Prix d'Architecture de Wallonie____________________________________________________________________________
Selected publications
Les Cahiers de l'Ibois/ Ibois Notebooks 1, F. Fromonot, S. Berthier, Y. Rocher, publication directors: Y. Weinand et C. Catsaros, 2020 EPFL Press Le Pavillon en bois du Théâtre de Vidy, under the direction of Yves Weinand; V. Baudriller, J. Gamerro, M. Jaccard, C. Robeller; 2017, PPURAdvanced Timber Structures - Architectural Designs and Digital Dimensioning, Y. Weinand, 2017, Birkhaüser, publié en trois langues (french : Structures Innovantes en Bois (2016); german : Neue Holztragwerke - Architektonische Entwürfe und digitale Bemessung (2017)Grubenmann Project / Projekt Grubenmann, Y. Weinand, 2016, Stiftung Grubenmann-SammlungTimber Project: Nouvelles formes d’architectures en bois, Y. Weinand, 2010, PPURArchitexto, Y. Weinand and D. Darcis, 2009, Editions Fourre-Tout, LiègeLe bois soudé, B. Stamm and Y. Weinand, 2004, Architecture Bois & DépendanceNew Modeling - projeter ensemble, Y. Weinand, 2003, PPUR 