Pierre DillenbourgA former teacher in elementary school, Pierre Dillenbourg graduated in educational science (University of Mons, Belgium). He started his research on learning technologies in 1984. In 1986, he has been on of the first in the world to apply machine learning to develop a self-improving teaching system. He obtained a PhD in computer science from the University of Lancaster (UK), in the domain of artificial intelligence applications for education. He has been assistant professor at the University of Geneva. He joined EPFL in 2002. He has been the director of Center for Research and Support on Learning and its Technologies, then academic director of Center for Digital Education, which implements the MOOC strategy of EPFL (over 2 million registrations). He is full professor in learning technologies in the School of Computer & Communication Sciences, where he is the head of the CHILI Lab: "Computer-Human Interaction for Learning & Instruction ». He is the director of the leading house DUAL-T, which develops technologies for dual vocational education systems (carpenters, florists,...). With EPFL colleagues, he launched in 2017 the Swiss EdTech Collider, an incubator with 80 start-ups in learning technologies. He (co-)-founded 4 start-ups, does consulting missions in the corporate world and joined the board of several companies or institutions. In 2018, he co-founded LEARN, the EPFL Center of Learning Sciences that brings together the local initiatives in educational innovation. He is a fellow of the International Society for Learning Sciences. He currently is the Associate Vice-President for Education at EPFL.
Jessica Elke Dehler ZuffereyI studied Psychology as a major and Computer Science as a minor at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. My Master thesis which I did at Max-Planck-Institute for Psychological Research in Munich with Prof. Günter Knoblich was in the field of social cognition.The interest in applied research made me join the lab of Prof. Friedrich Hesse at the Knowlegde Media Research Center (KMRC) in Tübingen for my PhD in the field of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL). I investigated the benefit of knowledge awareness, i.e. knowing what the other learners in the group know, for communication and collaboration. The CHILI lab of Prof. Pierre Dillenbourg at EPFL welcomed me for a visiting PhD stay.After the PhD I worked at the University of Fribourg on gender-equal university teaching with Prof. Bernadette Charlier and Helene Füger. Later I joined EPFL as a postdoc in a project on technology-enhanced vocational training (Dual-T). During 4 years I worked on pedagogical innovation in the EdTech startup Coorpacademy which is part of the Swiss EdTech Collider. While I am grateful for the rich experiences outside of academia, I returned to EPFL when the Center for Learning Sciences opened in 2018 to take the challenge of being its executive director.
