Johan Auwerx is Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he occupies the Nestle Chair in Energy Metabolism. Dr. Auwerx has been using molecular physiology and systems genetics to understand metabolism in health, aging and disease. Much of his work focused on understanding how diet, exercise and hormones control metabolism through changing the expression of genes by altering the activity of transcription factors and their associated cofactors. His work was instrumental for the development of agonists of nuclear receptors - a particular class of transcription factors - into drugs, which now are used to treat high blood lipid levels, fatty liver, and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Auwerx was amongst the first to recognize that transcriptional cofactors, which fine-tune the activity of transcription factors, act as energy sensors/effectors that influence metabolic homeostasis. His research validated these cofactors as novel targets to treat metabolic diseases, and spurred the clinical use of natural compounds, such as resveratrol, as modulators of these cofactor pathways.
Johan Auwerx was elected as a member of EMBO in 2003 and is the recipient of a dozen of international scientific prizes, including the Danone International Nutrition Award, the Oskar Minkowski Prize, and the Morgagni Gold Medal. His work is highly cited by his peers with a h-factor of over 100. He is an editorial board member of several journals, including Cell Metabolism, Molecular Systems Biology, The EMBO Journal, Journal of Cell Biology, Cell, and Science. Dr. Auwerx co-founded a handful of biotech companies, including Carex, PhytoDia, and most recently Mitobridge, and has served on several scientific advisory boards.
Dr. Auwerx received both his MD and PhD in Molecular Endocrinology at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium. He was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Florian Breider obtained his PhD in the field of the stable isotope biogeochemistry from the University of Neuchatel in 2013. This was followed by seven months of postdoc at EPFL in the Atmospheric Particles Research Laboratory and two years as research associate at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan) where he conducted studies on nitrous oxide biogeochemistry in oceans. From 2015 to 2018, he was research scientist in the Laboratory for Water Quality and Treatment at EPFL where he conducted research on disinfection by-products and antibiotic resistant bacteria. Since May 2018, he is director of the Central Environmental Laboratory at the Institute of Environmental Engineering of EPFL.
Dr. Benoît J.D. Ferrari studied Biochemistry and Biology and completed his PhD in Ecotoxicology at the University of Lorraine (Metz, France) in 2000. After several years at the University of Geneva (Forel F.A. Institute, Geneva, Switzerland; 2002-2008) and Irstea (Formerly Cemagref, Lyon, France; 2000-2002 and 2008-2013), he joined the Swiss Centre of Applied Ecotoxicology (Centre Ecotox Eawag/EPFL) in October 2013 as group leader of the soil and sediment ecotoxicology group at Lausanne. During his different mandates, he was implied as (co-)proponent in different research projects supported e.g. by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, the Swiss National Science Foundation, the French National Research Agency or the European Framework Programme for Research. His main areas of interest cover the ecodynamic of contaminants and their impact on the ecophysiology of organisms. Particularly, he is involved in 1) the development of exposure and effect indicators to evaluate the chemical stresses, 2) the integration of such indicators in laboratory- and field-based approaches to assess the quality of aquatic ecosystems, 3) the development of adapted bioassays for active biomonitoring, and 4) the transfer of such ecotoxicological tools and approaches towards end-users.
Dr. Michel Aguet, MD, held positions in academia and industry (Associate Professor at the Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Zürich; Head of Molecular Oncology, Genentech, So. San Francisco) before he was appointed director of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) (1996-2009). In the context of the integration of ISREC into the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), he was appointed as Full Professor at the newly established School of Life Sciences in 2005. From 2001-2013 he directed the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Molecular Oncology, a national program launched by the Swiss National Science Foundation to encourage translational cancer research and for which ISREC was the leading house. Dr. Aguet has been a SAB member in the pharmaceutical industry, biotech industry and venture capital industry since 1997.
A large part of his scientific career was devoted to exploring the molecular biology of interferons (cloning of the interferon gamma receptor, generation of various interferon signaling mutants in the mouse) and, in collaboration with Prof. Charles Weissmann, to investigating the role of prion related protein PrP in mouse prion disease models. In recent years his research focused on characterizing the role of BCL9 proteins, which are part of the Wnt/beta-catenin transcriptional activation complex, in regulating stem cell traits in intestinal epithelium and colorectal cancer. His laboratory is now closed due to retirement.
