Peter Martin BeardPeter Beard studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the University of Glasgow. After graduating in biochemistry, he moved to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London, where he obtained his PhD with L.V. Crawford in 1971. He then worked with P. Berg at Stanford University at the time the idea of gene cloning was first being tested. After initially joining B. Hirt in the Virology group at ISREC, he subsequently became a member of the senior scientific staff and was appointed as EPFL Adjunct Professor (professeur titulaire) in 2008. His work has focused on the relation between viral infections and cancer. Since 2011 he is Professor Emeritus and works with the undergraduate Teaching Section of Life Sciences and Technology on coordinating the Master's program in Molecular Medicine.
Joachim LingnerPhD at the Biocenter, University of Basel 1989-1992 (Supervisor: Walter Keller). Postdoc at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Colorado at Boulder 1993-1997 (Supervisor: Thomas Cech). Junior group leader at ISREC 1997-2001. Senior group leader at ISREC since 2002. Associate Professor at EPFL 2005-2008. Full Professor at EPFL since 2009. Honors: START-fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation in 1997; Friedrich Miescher Prize from the Swiss Society of Biochemistry in 2002; EMBO member in 2005; ERC advanced investigator grant in 2008.
Stewart ColeProfessor Stewart Cole is an international authority in bacterial molecular-genetics and genomics. He has made outstanding contributions in several fields including: bacterial anaerobic electron transport; genome analysis of retroviruses and papillomaviruses; antibiotic resistance mechanisms; and the molecular microbiology of toxigenic clostridia. His studies on isoniazid and multidrug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, together with his pioneering work on the pathogenicity, evolution and genomics of the tubercle and leprosy bacilli, have made him an undisputed leader in the field of mycobacterial research. The findings of his research are of direct relevance to public health and disease-control in both the developing world and the industrialised nations. He has published over 250 scientific papers and review articles, and holds many patents.
André SchiperAndré Schiper graduated in Physics from the ETHZ in Zurich in 1973 and received the PhD degree in Computer Science from EPFL in 1980. He has been a professor of computer science at EPFL since 1985, leading the Distributed Systems Laboratory. During the academic year 1992-1993 he was on sabbatical leave at the University of Cornell, Ithaca, New York (working with Ken Birman and Aleta Ricciardi), and in 2004-2005 at the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France (working with Bernadette Charron-Bost). His research interests are in the area of dependable distributed systems, middleware support for dependable systems, replication techniques (including for database systems), group communication, distributed transactions, and MANETs (mobile ad-hoc networks).
Prof. Schiper is member of the editorial boards of
Distributed Computing (DC), Springer Verlag - ACM,
Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), IEEE,
International Journal of Security and Networks (Inderscience).
John McKinneyProfessor John McKinney received his Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University (New York, NY) in 1994 for studies on cell cycle regulation in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
in the laboratory of Fred Cross. From 1995 to 1998, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of William Jacobs at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, NY), where he studied mechanisms of persistence in
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
. In 1999, he returned to Rockefeller University to establish his own laboratory as an Assistant (1999-2004) and then Associate (2004-2007) Professor. In July 2007, the lab relocated to the Global Health Institute in the School of Life Sciences at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, where McKinney is Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Microbiology and Microsystems (LMIC). Our research focuses on understanding the mechanistic basis of bacterial persistence in the context of host immunity and antimicrobial therapy, using
M. tuberculosis
as a "model" system.
Pierre GönczyPierre Gönczy obtained his PhD from The Rockefeller University (New York, USA) in 1995 and joined the laboratory of Tony Hyman at the EMBL (Heidelberg, Germany) as a postdoctoral fellow in 1996. He started his own laboratory at ISREC in 2000. In 2005, he became Associate Professor at the EPFL School of Life Sciences, and was promoted Full Professor in 2009.
Didier TronoAfter obtaining an M.D. from the University of Geneva and completing a clinical training in pathology, internal medicine and infectious diseases in Geneva and at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Didier Trono embarked in a scientific career at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research of MIT. In 1990, he joined the faculty of the Salk Institute for Biological Studies to launch a center for AIDS research. He moved back to Europe seven years later, before taking the reins of the newly created EPFL School of Life Sciences, which he directed from 2004 to 2012. He is now actively engaged in the efforts of Switzerland to integrate new technologies in the fields of precision medicine and personalized health.