Ali H. Sayed is Dean of Engineering at EPFL, Switzerland, where he also leads the Adaptive Systems Laboratory. He has also served as Distinguished Professor and Chairman of Electrical Engineering at UCLA. He is recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher and is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering. He is also a member of the World Academy of Sciences and served as President of the IEEE Signal Processing Society during 2018 and 2019.
Dr. Sayed is an author/co-author of over 570 scholarly publications and six books. His research involves several areas
including adaptation and learning theories, data and network sciences, statistical inference, and multiagent systems.
His work has been recognized with several major awards including the 2022 IEEE Fourier Award, the 2020 Norbert Wiener Society Award and the 2015 Education Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the 2014 Papoulis Award from the European Association for Signal Processing, the 2013 Meritorious Service Award and the 2012 Technical Achievement Award from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the 2005 Terman Award from the American Society for Engineering Education, the 2005 Distinguished Lecturer from the IEEE Signal Processing Society, the 2003 Kuwait Prize, and the 1996 IEEE Donald G. Fink Prize. His publications have been awarded several Best Paper Awards from the IEEE (2002, 2005, 2012, 2014) and EURASIP (2015). He is a Fellow of IEEE, EURASIP, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); the publisher of the journal Science.
Education: 1979 - Engineering diploma from Grenoble Institute of Technology. FRANCE. 1982 - PhD- Department of Chemistry, University of Southampton. Thesis entitled : Interfacial studies using drop image processing techniques. Positions : 1982 - 1984 SERC Research Fellow. University of Southampton. 1984 - 1985 CNRS Research Fellow. University of Southampton. 1985 - 1992 Lecturer in Physical Chemistry, University of Edinburgh. 1992 - Professor of Physical Chemistry, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. 2011 - 2014 Dean of Bachelor and Master studies Hubert Girault is the author of 2 textbooks, the co-author of about 600 scientific publications with more than 20'000 citations and the co-inventor of more than 15 patents. During his academic career, he has supervised 70 PhD students. 30 alumni of his laboratory are now Professors. Honours: Faraday medal 2006, Royal Society of Chemistry, Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry 2007, Reilley Award 2015. Fellow of the Electrochemical Society (USA), Shikata International medal, Polarography Society of Japan. Associate editor of Chemical Science
Wulfram Gerstner is Director of the Laboratory of Computational Neuroscience LCN at the EPFL. His research in computational neuroscience concentrates on models of spiking neurons and spike-timing dependent plasticity, on the problem of neuronal coding in single neurons and populations, as well as on the link between biologically plausible learning rules and behavioral manifestations of learning. He teaches courses for Physicists, Computer Scientists, Mathematicians, and Life Scientists at the EPFL. After studies of Physics in Tübingen and at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (Master 1989), Wulfram Gerstner spent a year as a visiting researcher in Berkeley. He received his PhD in theoretical physics from the Technical University Munich in 1993 with a thesis on associative memory and dynamics in networks of spiking neurons. After short postdoctoral stays at Brandeis University and the Technical University of Munich, he joined the EPFL in 1996 as assistant professor. Promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in February 2001, he is since August 2006 a full professor with double appointment in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences and the School of Life Sciences. Wulfram Gerstner has been invited speaker at numerous international conferences and workshops. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Neuroscience, Network: Computation in Neural Systems', Journal of Computational Neuroscience', and `Science'.
Michaël Thémans holds a M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics (University of Namur, Belgium) and a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Transportation Modeling (EPFL, Switzerland). His Ph.D. thesis, supervised by Prof. Michel Bierlaire, was entitled "Numerical Methods and Models Relevant to Transportation Applications".
Between 2002 and 2007, he was research and teaching assistant in the Transport and Mobility Laboratory at EPFL. He published 5 papers in international journals in the field of Transportation and Operations Research. He was teaching assistant for 15 courses in Operations Research and Behavioral Modeling. He also supervised 20 master theses and research projects in Optimization and Behavioral Modeling. During the same period, he was working on several large-scale transportation-related research projects, in association with MIT and ETH Zurich as well as transportation professionals in Switzerland (Bureau Robert Grandpierre Rapp, Lausanne, Büro Widmer, Frauenfeld), sponsored both by the Swiss Federal Office of Roads and the Swiss National Science Foundation.
Between 2007 and 2009, he was statistician and R&D specialist at the Nestlé Research Center in Lausanne. He provided support in statistics and modeling to R&D centers worldwide and was involved in over 50 R&D projects. In parallel to this, he developed innovative discrete choice models to predict consumer purchasing behavior and disseminated these new methodologies to Nestlé markets worldwide. He also designed and analyzed over 40 market research studies for various Nestlé markets around the world. He also gave training in market research and Design of Experiments to R&D community.
Between 2007 and 2011, he also holded a position as lecturer at EPFL, teaching a master course in Numerical Optimization. Since 2014, he is lecturer at EPFL, co-teaching the "Global Issues" course entitled "Mobility B" which focuses on transportation systems and logistics systems.
Between 2010 and 2014, he was the Deputy Director of EPFL's Transportation Center (TraCE), in charge of the operational management of the EPFL's Transportation Center with the main focus on the business development activities. The main tasks associated with this position were:
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Develop strategic business partnerships and research projects with private companies and industries as well as public institutions and authorities, at the local, national and international levels.
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Percolate and highlight EPFL's ongoing research activities in transportation outside EPFL.
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Obtain external funding to conduct new cutting-edge multi-disciplinary research projects in the field of transportation at EPFL.
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Management of large-scale R&D projects with industry.
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Promotion of technology transfer and innovation in all fields related to transportation and mobility.
Between January 2015 and December 2016, he was Deputy of the Vice-President for Innovation and Technology Transfer at EPFL, in charge of seconding the Vice-President Adrienne Corboud Fumagalli in her various tasks.
Since January 2017, he is the Deputy of the Vice-President for Innovation at EPFL and the Head of the "Large Enterprises" and "Innovation Projects" Units of the Vice-Presidency for Innovation. He is also in charge of the operational management of 5 Interdisciplinary Centers affiliated to the Vice-Presidency for Innovation.
Since May 2017, he also holds the position of Vice-President of the EPFL Innovation Park Foundation.
Since mid-2018, he acts as the EPFL’s representative in the Board of Switzerland Innovation Network West EPFL (an innovation-driven network composed of 6 innovation poles in Western Switzerland).
Some other activities and affiliations of Michaël Thémans include:
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Scientific consulting for various private companies and national agencies in Switzerland and in France.
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Business Development and Fund Raising for various EPFL's startups and spin-offs.
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Strategic Business Development Advisor for BestMile SA.
Since May 2012, in parallel to his main activity at EPFL, he is partner and Chief Business Development Officer at "6T - Bureau de Recherche", an EPFL's spin-off specialized in mobility analysis.
His main scientific expertise is in the design, development and applications of demand models and optimization algorithms, which he successfully used during ten years in transportation, food and marketing contexts. He also has a significant experience in market research and consumer understanding. He also has a strong experience in the transportation demand analysis and in the modeling/optimization/simulation of complex transportation systems.
During the years 2010-2014, he has acquired a global knowledge and expertise in transportation thanks to the operational and strategic management of EPFL's Transportation Center (TraCE) which gathers all EPFL's laboratories related to transportation and mobility.
He has also developed over the past seven years a strong experience and expertise in large-scale project management, people management, business development and technology transfer from research to business, with a strong focus on partnerships between academia and Large Enterprises in Switzerland and abroad. 