Edoardo CharbonEdoardo Charbon (SM’00 F’17) received the Elektrotechnik Diploma from ETH Zurich, the M.S. from the University of California at San Diego, and the Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, 1991, and 1995, respectively, all in electrical engineering and EECS. He has consulted with numerous organizations, including Bosch, X-Fab, Texas Instruments, Maxim, Sony, Agilent, and the Carlyle Group. He was with Cadence Design Systems from 1995 to 2000, where he was the architect of the company's initiative on information hiding for intellectual property protection. In 2000, he joined Canesta Inc., as the Chief Architect, where he led the development of wireless 3-D CMOS image sensors. Since 2002 he has been a member of the faculty of EPFL, where is a full professor since 2015. From 2008 to 2016 he was full professor and chair at the Delft University of Technology, where he spearheaded the university's effort on cryogenic electronics for quantum computing as part of QuTech. He has been the driving force behind the creation of deep-submicron CMOS SPAD technology, which is mass-produced since 2015 and is present in smartphones, telemeters, proximity sensors, and medical diagnostics tools. His interests span from 3-D vision, LiDAR, FLIM, FCS, NIROT to super-resolution microscopy, time-resolved Raman spectroscopy, and cryo-CMOS circuits and systems for quantum computing. He has authored or co-authored over 400 papers and two books, and he holds 23 patents. Dr. Charbon is a distinguished visiting scholar of the W. M. Keck Institute for Space at Caltech, a fellow of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Photonics Society, and a fellow of the IEEE.
Nicolas GrandjeanNicolas Grandjean received a PhD degree in physics from the University ofNice Sophia Antipolis in 1994 and shortly thereafter joined the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a permanent staff member. In 2004, he was appointed tenure-track assistant professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he created the Laboratory for advanced semiconductors for photonics and electronics. He was promoted to full professor in 2009. He was the director of the Institute of Condensed Matter Physics from 2012 to 2016 and then moved to the University of California at Santa Barbara where he spent 6 months as a visiting professor. Since 2018, he is the head of the School of Physics at the EPFL. He was awarded the Sandoz Family Foundation Grant for Academic Promotion, received the “Nakamura Lecturer” Award in 2010, the "Quantum Devices Award” at the 2017 Compound Semiconductor Week, and “2016 best teacher” award from the EPFL Physics School. His research interests are focused on the physics of nanostructures and III-V nitride semiconductor quantum photonics.
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.
Aurelio BayAurelio Bay graduated in physics at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) in 1980 and got his PhD degree from the same institution in 1986 for a work on the determination of the axial form factor of the ? meson.
He then went to Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories (LBL), USA as a post doc for two years, where he worked on the TPC/2? Electromagnetic Calorimeter and the SSC/LHC detector. He then came back to Europe and was named Maître Assistant at University of Geneva till 1994, where he started working at the L3 experiment of LEP at CERN.
He was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Lausanne in 1994 and Full Professor in 1998, continuing working at LEP, LEP2 and LHCb at CERN , and starting a collaboration at BELLE experiment at KEK, Tsukuba (Japan).
At the University of Lausanne he was Director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Deputy Director of the Physics Department and Deputy of the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences.
In 2003, following the merge of UNIL physics department into the EPFL School of Basic Sciences, he was appointed Full Professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Director of the EPFL Laboratory of High Energy Physics.
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).
Olivier SchneiderAfter his thesis defense in particle physics in 1989 at University of Lausanne, Olivier Schneider joins LBL, the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (California), to work on the CDF experiment at the Tevatron in Fermilab (Illinois), first as a research fellow supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation, and later as a post-doc at LBL. He participates in the construction and commissioning of the first silicon vertex detector to operate successfully at a hadron collider; this detector enabled the discovery of the sixth quark, named "top". Since 1994, he comes back to Europe and participates in the ALEPH experiment at CERN's Large Electron-Positron Collider, as CERN fellow and then as CERN scientific staff. He specializes in heavy flavour physics. In 1998, he becomes associate professor at University of Lausanne, then extraordinary professor at the Swiss Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) in 2003, and finally full professor at EPFL in 2010. Having worked since 1997 on the preparation of the LHCb experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider, which started operation in 2009, he is now analyzing the first data. He also contributes since 2001 to the exploitation of the data recorded at the Belle experiment (KEK laboratory, Tsukuba, Japan). These two experiments study mainly the decays of hadrons containing a b quark, as well CP violation, i.e. the non-invariance under the symmetry between matter and antimatter.