Dominique de WerraDominique de Werra was born in Switzerland in 1942. He graduated in physical engineering at EPFL in 1965, and in 1969, a doctorate in technical sciences.
From 1969 to 1971 he was professor at Waterloo University (Canada) in the Management Sciences department. He has been a visiting professor in various European and American High Schools. In 1971 he became professor of Operations Research in Mathematics at EPFL. In 1990, he was appointed Vice President of EPFL and in addition, he became Director of training in autumn 1993.
His research focuses on discrete mathematics (combinatorial optimization, graph theory, algorithms, etc.) and their applications to industrial and informatics technology.
He has participated and directed several interdisciplinary projects in production, distribution, energy and scheduling. His work leads in particular to the time management problem and specifically to calendar management for important projects (sports, education, etc.).
In 1987-1988, he chaired the EURO association which encompasses the Operational Research in Europe. He is Dr. h.c. of Paris University and Ecole Polytechnique in Poznan, and he was the winner of the European gold medal (EURO) of Operational Research in 1995. In March 2000 he was appointed Dean of International Affairs.
Sofia Charlotta OlhedeSofia Olhede is a professor of Statistics at EPFL in Switzerland. She joined UCL prior to this in 2007, before which she was a senior lecturer of statistics (associate professor) at Imperial College London (2006-2007), a lecturer of statistics (assistant professor) (2002-2006), where she also completed her PhD in 2003 and MSci in 2000. She has held three research fellowships while at UCL: UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Springboard fellowship as well as a five-year Leadership fellowship, and now holds a European Research Council Consolidator fellowship. Sofia has contributed to the study of stochastic processes; time series, random fields and networks. Sofia was part of the multi-institutional team that set up the UK national data science institute, the Alan Turing Institute. She organised and served as chair of the science committee that developed the initial 500 000 pounds scientific programme of the institute; peer-reviewing over 100 workshop proposals and hosting over 30. She also chaired the first recruitment wave of the institute hiring 13 data scientists as a multi-university recruitment drive. Sofia was a member of the Royal Society and British Academy Data Governance Working Group, and the Royal Society working group on machine learning. Most recently she was one of 3 commissioners on a law society commission on the usage of algorithms in the justice system.