Michele CeriottiMichele Ceriotti received his Ph.D. in Physics from ETH Zürich in 2010. He spent three years in Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College. Since 2013 he leads the laboratory for Computational Science and Modeling in the Institute of Materials at EPFL. His research revolves around the atomic-scale modelling of materials, based on the sampling of quantum and thermal fluctuations and on the use of machine learning to predict and rationalize structure-property relations. He has been awarded the IBM Research Forschungspreis in 2010, the Volker Heine Young Investigator Award in 2013, an ERC Starting Grant in 2016, and the IUPAP C10 Young Scientist Prize in 2018.
Jacques RappazOriginaire de Neyruz-sur-Moudon (VD), Jacques Rappaz est né le 22 mars 1947. Après ses études primaires et secondaires à Lausanne, il étudie la physique, de 1964 à 1970, à l'Ecole Polytechnique de l'Université de Lausanne (EPUL et EPFL dès 1969) où il obtient son diplôme en janvier 1971. Il entreprend ensuite un travail de recherche en analyse numérique à l'EPFL. En avril 1976, il soutient une thèse consacrée à l'approximation spectrale d'opérateurs provenant de la physique des plasmas. De 1977 à 1980, il est boursier du Fonds National Suisse (FNS) et séjourne à Paris. A l'Ecole Polytechnique de Palaiseau et à l'Université Paris VI, il travaille sur l'approximation de problèmes non-linéaires provenant de la physique.De 1980 à 1985, il retourne à l'EPFL en tant que chercheur au FNS puis collaborateur scientifique du Professeur Jean Descloux. En 1983 il entreprend, en collaboration avec l'entreprise Alusuisse, des recherches sur la simulation numérique du procédé Hall-Héroult permettant la production de l'aluminium par électrolyse. Ces recherches ont débouché par la suite sur de nombreux projets en collaboration avec les compagnies Alcan, puis Péchiney et Rio Tinto. En 1985, Jacques Rappaz est nommé professeur ordinaire de mathématiques appliquées à l'Université de Neuchâtel qu'il quittera en octobre 1987 pour un poste de professeur ordinaire à l'EPFL. De 1983 à 2012 où il a pris sa retraite, Jacques Rappaz a enseigné de nombreux cours d'analyse et d'analyse numérique aux ingénieurs et aux mathématiciens de l'EPFL, de l’Université de Genève et de l'Université de Neuchâtel. Sa recherche concerne les aspects théoriques et pratiques de la résolution numérique des équations aux dérivées partielles. Il a participé à de nombreux projets de simulations numériques en collaboration avec les milieux industriels et/ou les départements d'ingénieurs de l'EPFL.
Jan Van HerleNé à Anvers, Belgique, 1966. En Suisse depuis 1983. Naturalisé Suisse en 2004 par persuasion de la culture suisse démocratique et participative 'bottom-up'. Pas de double nationalité. Conseiller communal durant 2 mandats de 5 ans de 2006 à 2016.
1987 : Chimiste de l'Université de Bâle (CH).
1988 : Post-grade informatique de l'Ecole d'Ingénieurs de Bâle.
1989 : Stage industriel chez ABB à Baden (CH).
1990-1993 : Thesè EPFL
1994-1995 : Postdoc au Japon (Tokyo).
1996-2000 : Chercheur à l'EPFL, Dpt. Chimie, responsable de groupe.
1998-2000 : Master en Energy Technology, EPFL.
2000 : Cofondateur de HTceramix SA (EPFL spin-off), à Yverdon (actuellement 12 employés). La maison mère SOLIDpower en Italie, qui a acheté notre technologie en 2007, emploie 250 personnes et a levé 70 MCHF.
2000-2012 : 1er Assistant et chargé de cours en STI-IGM. Promu à MER en 2008.
2013-présent: MER responsable d'unité.
Output : 135 publications, 120 papiers de conférence, 15 théses de doctorat, 4 thèses en cours, 37 thèses de master. Facteur h-42, >5000 citations.
Fonds levés jusqu'à présent >19 MCHF.
5 langues couramment (néerlandais, français, allemand (y.c. suisse-allemand), anglais, espagnol).
Anton SchleissProf. Dr. Anton J. Schleiss graduated in Civil Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland, in 1978. After joining the Laboratory of Hydraulic, Hydrology and Glaciology at ETH as a research associate and senior assistant, he obtained a Doctorate of Technical Sciences on the topic of pressure tunnel design in 1986. After that he worked for 11 years for Electrowatt Engineering Ltd. (now Pöyry) in Zurich and was involved in the design of many hydropower projects around the world as an expert on hydraulic engineering and underground waterways. Until 1996 he was Head of the Hydraulic Structures Section in the Hydropower Department at Electrowatt. In 1997, he was nominated full professor and became Director of the Laboratory of Hydraulic Constructions (LCH) in the Civil Engineering Department of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). The LCH activities comprise education, research and services in the field of both fundamental and applied hydraulics and design of hydraulic structures and schemes. The research focuses on the interaction between water, sediment-rock, air and hydraulic structures as well as associated environmental issues and involves both numerical and physical modeling of water infrastructures. In May 2018, he became Honorary Professor at EPFL. More than 50 PhD and Postdoc research projects have been carried out under his guidance. From 1999 to 2009 he was Director of the Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Water Resources Management and Hydraulic Engineering held in Lausanne in collaboration with ETH Zurich and the universities of Innsbruck (Austria), Munich (Germany), Grenoble (France) and Liège (Belgium). From 2006 to 2012 he was the Head of the Civil Engineering program of EPFL and chairman of the Swiss Committee on Dams (SwissCOLD). In 2006, he obtained the ASCE Karl Emil Hilgard Hydraulic Price as well as the J. C. Stevens Award. He was listed in 2011 among the 20 international personalities that “have made the biggest difference to the sector Water Power & Dam Construction over the last 10 years”. Between 2014 and 2017 he was Council member of International Association for Hydro-Environment Engineering and Research (IAHR) and he was chair of the Europe Regional Division of IAHR until 2016. For his outstanding contributions to advance the art and science of hydraulic structures engineering he obtained in 2015 the ASCE-EWRI Hydraulic Structures Medal. The French Hydro Society (SHF) awarded him with the Grand Prix SHF 2018. After having served as vice-president between 2012 and 2015 he was president of the International Commission on Large Dams (ICOLD) from 2015 to 2018. On behalf of ICOLD he his the coordinator of the EU Horizon 2020 project "Hydropower Europe". With more than 40 years of experience he is regularly involved as a consultant and expert in large water infrastructures projects including hydropower and dams all over the world. Awards (besides those mentioned above): ASCE-Journal of Hydraulic Engineering Outstanding Reviewer Recognition 2013 ASCE-EWRI-Journal of Hydraulic Engineering 2014 Best Technical Note
Wulfram GerstnerWulfram 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'.
Alireza KarimiAlireza Karimi received his B. Sc. and M. Sc. degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1987 and 1990, respectively, from Amir Kabir University (Tehran Polytechnic). Then he received his DEA and Ph. D. degrees both on Automatic Control from Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble (INPG) in 1994 and 1997, respectively. He was Assistant Professor at Electrical Engineering Department of Sharif University of Technology in Teheran from 1998 to 2000. Then he joined Automatic Laboratory of Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne, Switzerland. He is currently Professor of Automatic Control and the head of "Data-Driven Modelling and Control" group. His research interests include data-driven controller tuning and robust control with application to mechatronic systems and electrical grids.
Viktor KuncakViktor Kunčak joined EPFL in 2007, after receiving a PhD degree from MIT. Since then has been leading the Laboratory for Automated Reasoning and Analysis and supervised at least 12 completed PhD theses. His works on languages, algorithms and systems for verification and automated reasoning. He served as an initiator and one of the coordinators of a European network (COST action) in the area of automated reasoning, verification, and synthesis. In 2012 he received a 5-year single-investigator European Research Council (ERC) grant of 1.5M EUR. His invited talks include those at Lambda Days, Scala Days, NFM, LOPSTR, SYNT, ICALP, CSL, RV, VMCAI, and SMT. A paper on test generation he co-authored received an ACM SIGSOFT distinguished paper award at ICSE. A PLDI paper he co-authored was published in the Communications of the ACM as a Research Highlight article. His Google Scholar profile reports an over-approximate H-index of 38. He was an associate editor of ACM Transactions on Programming Languages and Systems (TOPLAS) and served as a co-chair of conferences on Computer-Aided Verification (CAV), Formal Methods in Computer Aided Design (FMCAD), Workshop on Synthesis (SYNT), and Verification, Model Checking, and Abstract Interpretation (VMCAI). At EPFL he teaches courses on functional and parallel programming, compilers, and verification. He has co-taught the MOOC "Parallel Programming" that was visited by over 100'000 learners and completed by thousands of students from all over the world.
