Director of EPFL Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory (1994-present); Founder & Director of ENAC Institute of Infrastructures, Resources and Environment (2002-2009); Founder & Director of EPFL Doctoral Program in Environment (2002-2009); Co-Director of EPFL Institute of Building Technology (1994-1997); Associate Professor of Building Physics at EPFL (1994-1997); Associate Professor of Building Physics at University of Geneva (1990-1997); Group Leader & Research Fellow at the EPFL Solar Energy Research Group (1981-1989); Research Fellow at the Applied Geophysics Institute of University of Lausanne (1980-1981).
Sophia Haussener is an Associate Professor heading the Laboratory of Renewable Energy Science and Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Her current research is focused on providing design guidelines for thermal, thermochemical, and photoelectrochemical energy conversion reactors through multi-physics modeling. Her research interests include: thermal sciences, fluid dynamics, charge transfer, electro-magnetism, and thermo/electro/photochemistry in complex multi-phase media on multiple scales. She received her MSc (2007) and PhD (2010) in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich. Between 2011 and 2012, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) and the Energy Environmental Technology Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). She has published over 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. She has been awarded the ETH medal (2011), the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation award (2011), the ABB Forschungspreis (2012), the Prix Zonta (2015), the Global Change Award (2017), and the Raymond Viskanta Award (2019), and is a recipient of a Starting Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation (2014). She is a deputy leader in the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research (SCCER) on energy storage and acts as a Member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Helmholtz Zentrum.
Daniel Favrat got his Master degree in Mechanical Engineering from EPFL in 1972 and his PhD also from EPFL. He then spent 12 years in industrial research laboratories in Canada (Esso Canada) and Switzerland (CERAC: Centre Européen de Recherche Atlas Copco). From 1988 to 2013, he was full professor and director of the Industrial Energy Systems Laboratory (LENI) at EPFL. During that period he was successively director of the Institute of Energy and director of the Institute of Mechanical Engineering. From August 2013 he works at EPFL Energy Center first as director ad interim and now as director technologies.
His research fields include systemic analyses accounting for energy, environment and economics (so-called environomic optimisation) and advanced conversion systems for a more rational use of energy (heat pumps &ORC, engines, fuel cells, power plants, etc).
He is a member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences and of the National Academy of Technology in France. He has also an active participation in the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO) as a member of the executive committee and vice-chair of the energy committee. He is associate editor of the journal "Energy" and of International Journal of thermodynamics. He is the author of several books on thermodynamics and energy systems analysis. He is also affiliate professor at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm.
Christophe Ballif is director of the Phototovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratoryb) (PV-Lab at the institute of microengineering (IMT) in Neuchâtel (part of the EPFL since 2009). The lab focus is on the science and technology of high efficiency heterojunction crystalline cells,so-called passivating contacts for solar cells, multi-junction solar cells include novel generation Perovskite on innovative optical high speed detector and on various macroelectronics application. It also deals with energy management with a focus on integration of solar electricity into the energy system. The PV-Lab has strongly contributed to technology transfer and industrialization of novel devices and full technology with numerous companies. Christophe Ballif graduated as a physicist from the EPFL in 1994, where he also obtained in 1998 his Phd degree working on novel PV materials. He accomplished his postdoctoral research at NREL (Golden, US) on compound semiconductor solar cells (CIGS and CdTe). He worked then at the Fraunhofer ISE (Ge) on crystalline silicon photovoltaics (monocrystalline and multi-crystalline) until 2003 and then at the EMPA in Thun (CH) before becoming full professor at the University of Neuchâtel IMT in 2004, taking over the chair of Prof. A. Shah. Since 2013, C.Ballif is also the director of the new CSEM PV-Center, also located in Neuchâtel. The CSEM PV-Center is focussing more on industrialisation and technology transfer in the field of solar energy, including solar electricity management and storage. At the core of the CSEM PV-center activities lies several "pilot lines" for various kinds of solar cells manufacturing, with a focus coating technologies, wet chemistry processes for crystalline silicon, metalisation techniques for solar cells, and a platform for developing "ideal packaging solutions and polymers" for PV modules. In addition, joined facitilites between CSEM and EPFL of over 800 m2 are available for modules manufacturing, measuring and accelerated aging. CSEM PV-center has also full team dedicated to storage and energy systems and operates a joined center with BFH in Biel for research on electrochemical storage. He (co-) authored over 500 journal and technical papers, as well as several patents. He is an elected member of the SATW, member of the scientific council of the Swiss AEE, and member of the board of the EPFL Energy center. In 2016, he recieved the Becquerel prize for his contributions to the field of high efficiency photovoltaics.
Mario Paolone received the M.Sc. (with honors) and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. In 2005, he was appointed assistant professor in power systems at the University of Bologna where he was with the Power Systems laboratory until 2011. In 2010, he received the Associate Professor eligibility from the Politecnico di Milano, Italy. Since 2011 he joined the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland, where he is now Full Professor, Chair of the Distributed Electrical Systems laboratory and Head of the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research (SCCER) FURIES (Future Swiss Electrical infrastructure). He was co-chairperson of the technical programme committees of the 9th edition of the International Conference of Power Systems Transients (IPST 2009) and of the 2016 Power Systems Computation Conference (PSCC 2016). He was chair of the technical programme committee of the 2018 Power Systems Computation Conference (PSCC 2018). In 2013, he was the recipient of the IEEE EMC Society Technical Achievement Award. He was co-author of several papers that received the following awards: best IEEE Transactions on EMC paper award for the year 2017, in 2014 best paper award at the 13th International Conference on Probabilistic Methods Applied to Power Systems, Durham, UK, in 2013 Basil Papadias best paper award at the 2013 IEEE PowerTech, Grenoble, France, in 2008 best paper award at the International Universities Power Engineering Conference (UPEC). He was the founder Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier journal Sustainable Energy, Grids and Networks and was Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics. His research interests are in power systems with particular reference to real-time monitoring and operation, power system protections, power systems dynamics and power system transients. Mario Paolone is author or coauthor of over 300 scientific papers published in reviewed journals and international conferences.
Roberto Castello is a senior scientist and group leader at the EPFL Laboratory of Solar Energy and Building Physics. Physicist by training, he has extensive experience in collecting, classifying and interpreting large datasets using advanced data mining techniques and statistical methods. He received his MSc (2007) in Particle Physics and PhD (2010) in Physics and Astrophysics from the University of Torino. He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Belgian National Research Fund (2011-2014) and at the CERN Experimental Physics Department (2015-2017) as a research fellow and data scientist. He is primary author of more than 20 peer-reviewed publications and he presented at major international conferences in the high energy physics domain.
In 2018 he joined the Solar Energy and Building Physics Laboratory (LESO-PB) to work on data mining and Machine Learning techniques for the built environment and renewable energy. His main research interests are: spatio-temporal modeling of renewable energy potential, energy consumption forecasting techniques, anomaly detection, and computer vision techniques for automated classification in the built environment.
He leads the group of Urban Data Mining, Intelligence and Simulation at LESO-PB and he is a member of the NRP75 Big Data project (HyEnergy) of the Swiss National Science Foundation. He is a member of the Swiss Competence Centre for Energy Research (SCCER) and deputy leader of the working group on Leveraging Ubiquitous Energy Data. He has served as a scientific committee member, workshop organizer and speaker at international conferences (ICAE 2020, Applied Machine Learning Days 2019 and 2020, CISBAT 2019 and 2021 and SDS2020).
Since 2017 he is member of the Geneva 2030 Ecosystem network, promoting the United Nations agenda towards the realization of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
