Viktor KuncakViktor Kunčak joined EPFL in 2007, after receiving a PhD degree from MIT. Since then has been leading the Laboratory for Automated Reasoning and Analysis and supervised at least 12 completed PhD theses. His works on languages, algorithms and systems for verification and automated reasoning. He served as an initiator and one of the coordinators of a European network (COST action) in the area of automated reasoning, verification, and synthesis. In 2012 he received a 5-year single-investigator European Research Council (ERC) grant of 1.5M EUR. His invited talks include those at Lambda Days, Scala Days, NFM, LOPSTR, SYNT, ICALP, CSL, RV, VMCAI, and SMT. A paper on test generation he co-authored received an ACM SIGSOFT distinguished paper award at ICSE. A PLDI paper he co-authored was published in the Communications of the ACM as a Research Highlight article. His Google Scholar profile reports an over-approximate H-index of 38. He was an associate editor of ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) and served as a co-chair of conferences on Computer-Aided Verification (CAV), Formal Methods in Computer Aided Design (FMCAD), Workshop on Synthesis (SYNT), and Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI). At EPFL he teaches courses on functional and parallel programming, compilers, and verification. He has co-taught the MOOC "Parallel Programming" that was visited by over 100'000 learners and completed by thousands of students from all over the world.
Ali H. SayedAli H. Sayed is Dean of Engineering at EPFL, Switzerland, where he also leads the Adaptive Systems Laboratory. He has also served as Distinguished Professor and Chairman of Electrical Engineering at UCLA. He is recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He is also a member of the World Academy of Sciences and served as President of the IEEE Signal Processing Society during 2018 and 2019.
Dr. Sayed is an author/co-author of over 570 scholarly publications and six books. His research involves several areas
including adaptation and learning theories, data and network sciences, statistical inference, and multiagent systems.
His work has been recognized with several major awards including the 2022 IEEE Fourier Award, the 2020 Norbert Wiener Society Award and the 2015 Education Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the 2014 Papoulis Award from the European Association for Signal Processing, the 2013 Meritorious Service Award and the 2012 Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the 2005 Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, the 2005 Distinguished Lecturer from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the 2003 Kuwait Prize, and the 1996 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize. His publications have been awarded several Best Paper Awards from the IEEE (2002, 2005, 2012, 2014) and EURASIP (2015). He is a Fellow of IEEE, EURASIP, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); the publisher of the journal Science.
Colin Neil JonesColin Jones is an Associate Professor in the Automatic Control Laboratory at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. He was a Senior Researcher at the Automatic Control Lab at ETH Zurich until 2011 and obtained a PhD in 2005 from the University of Cambridge for his work on polyhedral computational methods for constrained control. Prior to that, he was at the University of British Columbia in Canada, where he took a BASc and MASc in Electrical Engineering and Mathematics. Colin has worked in a variety of industrial roles, ranging from commercial building control to the development of custom optimization tools focusing on retail human resource scheduling. His current research interests are in the theory and computation of predictive control and optimization, and their application to green energy generation, distribution and management.
Serge VaudenaySerge Vaudenay entered at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in 1989 with a major in mathematics. He earned his agrégation (secondary teaching degree) in mathematics in 1992, then a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Paris 7 - Denis Diderot in 1995. He subsequently became a senior research fellow at the CNRS, prior to being granted his habilitation à diriger des recherches (a postdoctoral degree authorizing the recipient to supervise doctoral students). In 1999, he was appointed as a Professor at the EPFL, where he created the Security and Cryptography Laboratory.
Martin VetterliMartin Vetterli was appointed president of EPFL by the Federal Council following a selection process conducted by the ETH Board, which unanimously nominated him.
Professor Vetterli was born on 4 October 1957 in Solothurn and received his elementary and secondary education in Neuchâtel Canton. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich (ETHZ) in 1981, a Master’s of Science degree from Stanford University in 1982, and a PhD from EPFL in 1986. Professor Vetterli taught at Columbia University as an assistant and then associate professor. He was subsequently named full professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley before returning to EPFL as a full professor at the age of 38. He has also taught at ETHZ and Stanford University.
Professor Vetterli has earned numerous national and international awards for his research in electrical engineering, computer science and applied mathematics, including the National Latsis Prize in 1996. He is a fellow of both the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member the US National Academy of Engineering. He has published over 170 articles and three reference works.
Professor Vetterli’s work on the theory of wavelets, which are used in signal processing, is considered to be of major importance by his peers, and his areas of expertise, including image and video compression and self-organized communication systems, are central to the development of new information technologies. As the founding director of the National Centre of Competence in Research on Mobile Information and Communication Systems, Professor Vetterli is a staunch advocate of transdisciplinary research.
Professor Vetterli knows EPFL inside and out. An EPFL graduate himself, he began been teaching at the school in 1995, was vice president for International Affairs and then Institutional Affairs from 2004 to 2011, and served as dean of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences in 2011 and 2012. In addition to his role as president of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation, a position he held from 2013 to 2016, he heads the EPFL’s Audiovisual Communications Laboratory (LCAV) since 1995.
Professor Vetterli has supported more than 60 students in Switzerland and the United States in their doctoral work and makes a point of following their highly successful careers, whether it is in the academic or business world.
He is the author of some 50 patents, some of which were the basis for start-ups coming out of his lab, such as Dartfish and Illusonic, while others were sold (e.g. Qualcomm) as successful examples of technology transfer. He actively encourages young researchers to market the results of their work.
Volkan CevherVolkan Cevher received the B.Sc. (valedictorian) in electrical engineering from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey, in 1999 and the Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA in 2005. He was a Research Scientist with the University of Maryland, College Park from 2006-2007 and also with Rice University in Houston, TX, from 2008-2009. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne and a Faculty Fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Rice University. His research interests include machine learning, signal processing theory, optimization theory and methods, and information theory. Dr. Cevher is an ELLIS fellow and was the recipient of the Google Faculty Research award in 2018, the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award in 2016, a Best Paper Award at CAMSAP in 2015, a Best Paper Award at SPARS in 2009, and an ERC CG in 2016 as well as an ERC StG in 2011.
