Andrew Charles OatesAfter an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at the University of Adelaide with Honours in Robert Saint’s lab, Andrew Oates received his Ph.D. at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the University of Melbourne in the lab of Andrew Wilks. His postdoctoral time was at Princeton University and the University of Chicago in the lab of Robert Ho, where his studies on the segmentation clock in zebrafish began in 1998. In 2003 he moved to Germany and started his group at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden. In 2012 he accepted a position at University College London as Professor of vertebrate developmental genetics and moved his group to the MRC-National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill in London. From April 2015, he became a member of the Francis Crick Institute in London. In September 2016, he joined École polytechnique fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland as a Professor, where he is the head of the Timing, Oscillation, Patterns Laboratory. From April 2018 he served as Director of the Institute of Bioengineering, and from January 2021 became the Dean of the School of Life Sciences.
The Timing, Oscillation, Patterns Laboratory is composed of biologists, engineers, and physicists using molecular genetics, quantitative imaging, and theoretical analysis to study a population of coupled genetic oscillators in the vertebrate embryo termed the segmentation clock. This system drives the rhythmic, sequential, and precise formation of embryonic body segments, exhibiting rich spatial and temporal phenomena spanning from molecular to tissue scales.
Julien Maillard2011 - present: Research associate at the Laboratory for Environmental Biotechnology (LBE, IIE-ENAC, EPFL)
2007 - 2010: Postdoctoral Fellow at the Laboratory for Environmental Biotechnology (LBE, IIE-ENAC, EPFL)
2005 - 2006: Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of East Anglia (UEA, Norwich, UK)
2000 - 2004: PhD thesis at the Laboratory for Environmental Biotechnology (LBE)
1995 - 2000: B.sc & M.sc at the Swiss Federal Institute for Technology, Zurich (ETHZ)
Christof HolligerOriginaire d'Adliswil, Christof Holliger est né en 1959. Diplômé de l'ETHZ en biologie en 1984, il mène des travaux de recherche dans le domaine de la microbiologie environnementale à l'Université d'Agriculture de Wageningen (Pays-Bas) où il obtient son doctorat en Science de l'environnement en 1992. En 1992, il retourne en Suisse engagé comme collaborateur scientifique et chef de groupe à l'Institut Fédéral pour l'Aménagement, l'Epuration et la Protection des Eaux (EAWAG) à Kastanienbaum. Il y continue ses recherches sur la déchloruration réductrice, commencées aux Pays-Bas, et dirige des travaux sur la réduction des composés nitroaromatiques, la réduction du fer et la méthanogenèse psychrophile dans les sédiments des lacs. En octobre 1998, il est nommé professeur assistant en biotechnologie environnementale au Département de génie rural de l'EPFL. Ses recherches visent l'application des micro-organismes anaérobies pour le traitement des eaux résiduaires. En novembre 2004, il est nommé professeur associé et devient responsable du laboratoire de biotechnologie environnementale à la Faculté de l'Environnement naturel, architectural et construit. L'utilisation des techniques de la biologie moléculaire pour la caractérisation des communautés microbiennes impliquées dans le biotraitement de l'air, des eaux et des sols pollués est un outil clé dans les différents projets de recherche visants le développement des nouveaux procédés de traitement.
Felix NaefFelix Naef studied theoretical physics at the ETHZ and obtained his PhD from the EPFL in 2000. He then received postdoctoral training at the Center for Studies in Physics and Biology at the Rockefeller University (NYC) under the guidance of Prof. Magnasco. His research focuses on the modeling and interpretation of high-throughput functional data and the study of biomolecular oscillators. He joined ISREC as an associate scientist in early 2004 and is currently Associate Professor in the Institute of Bioengineering (IBI).
Lukas KühnLukas Kühn graduated in biochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. He received his PhD in 1979 for a thesis with Jean-Pierre Kraehenbuhl at the University of Lausanne. After postdoctoral work in Lausanne and with Frank Ruddle at Yale University, USA, he became group leader at ISREC in 1984, was promoted senior scientist in 1988 and EPFL Adjunct Professor (professeur titulaire) in June 2008.
Denis DubouleDenis Duboule is born in 1955 and is both swiss and french national. He studied biology at the university of Geneva, where he obtained a PhD in mammalian embryology in 1984. He then spent 10 years abroad, first as a group leader in the medical faculty in Strasbourg (France), then at the European Laboratory for Molecular Biology (EMBL) in Germany. In 1993, he was appointed full professor at the university of Geneva, where he chairs the department of Genetics and Evolution ever since 1997. In 2001, he chaired the national center of research Frontiers in Genetics and in 2012 the division III of the SNSF. In 2006, he was appointed full professor at the federal institute of technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, where he leads the laboratory of Developmental Genomics (UpDUB).
His research activities are in the fields of embryology, genetics and developmental genomics of mammals, in an evolutionnary context. In particular, his laboratory has been closely associated with the structural and functional studies of mammalian Hox genes, by using mouse molecular genetic approaches. Duboule is also active in the communication of science, is member of the Academia Europea as well as of several academies in Switzerland, France and the Netherland. He is a foreign member of the Royal Society (UK) and of the National Academy of Sciences USA. He has received various scientific prizes and awards, amongst which the Marcel Benoist Prize, the Louis-Jeantet prize for medicine in 1998 or the international INSERM prize in 2010 (see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Duboule). Johan AuwerxJohan 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.
