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'.
Michael GraetzelProfessor of Physical Chemistry at the Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Michael Graetzel, PhD, directs there the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces. He pioneered research on energy and electron transfer reactions in mesoscopic systems and their use to generate electricity and fuels from sunlight. He invented mesoscopic injection solar cells, one key embodiment of which is the dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC). DSCs are meanwhile commercially produced at the multi-MW-scale and created a number of new applications in particular as lightweight power supplies for portable electronic devices and in building integrated photovoltaics. They engendered perovskite solar cells (PSCs) which turned into the most exciting break-through in the history of photovoltaics. He received a number of prestigious awards, of which the most recent ones include the RusNANO Prize, the Zewail Prize in Molecular Science, the Global Energy Prize, the Millennium Technology Grand Prize, the Marcel Benoist Prize, the King Faisal International Science Prize, the Einstein World Award of Science and the Balzan Prize. He is a Fellow of several learned societies and holds eleven honorary doctor’s degrees from European and Asian Universities. His over 1500 publications have received some 220’000 citations with an h-factor of 218 (SI-Web of Science) demonstrating the strong impact of his scientific work.
Heinz HügliHeinz Hügli est professeur honoraire à l'Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL). Il a été directeur de recherches et professeur associé à l'Institut de Microtechnique de l'Université de Neuchâtel, Suisse, où il était chargé d'un enseignement et dirigeait le Laboratoire de Reconnaissance des Formes. De 1988 à 2008, ce laboratoire a conduit des recherches dans les domaines de la vision par ordinateur, avec un accent particulier sur la vision précoce, l'inspection industrielle, la modélisation et la reconnaissance d'objets 3D. Heinz Hügli est ingénieur diplômé de l'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Zurich (EPFZ) où il obtint aussi son titre de docteur en sciences techniques. Il a travaillé cinq ans dans le cadre du groupe de traitement des images à l'EPFZ et deux ans avec le Medical Imaging Science Group, University of Southern California. En 1982, il rejoint l'Université de Neuchâtel, Suisse, où il conduisit des recherches dans le domaine du traitement de la parole avant de créer le Laboratoire de reconnaissance des formes (PARLAB). Il a enseigné à l'Université de Neuchâtel, l'Université de Berne et l'EPFL. Auteur de plus de 150 publications scientifiques, il a présidé des conférences internationales, a été membre de plusieurs socités scientifiques et a participé aux comités de programmes de nombreuses conférences.
Radivoje PopovicRadivoje Popovic received the Dipl. Ing. degree in engineering physics from the University of Belgrade, Yugoslavia in 1969, and the M.Sc and Dr.Sc. degrees in electronics from the University of Nis, Yugoslavia in 1974 and 1978.
From 1969 to 1981, he worked for Elektronska Industrija in Nis, Yugoslavia, where from 1978 to 1981 he was head of CMOS department. From 1982 to 1993, he was with Landis & Gyr AG, Central R&D in Zug, Switzerland, where from 1991 to 1993 he was vice president.
In 1994 Popovic joined EPFL (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland), as extraordinary professor for microtechnology systems, and became ordinary professor in 1997. He taught courses in conceptual product design, semiconductor device physics, microelectronics, optical detectors, and integrated sensors; and he was adviser of 20 PhD students. Since 2010 he is professor emeritus.
Currently, he is chief technology officer of SENIS AG (www.senis.ch).
Popovic has published a book on Hall effect devices, and is author or co-author of about 280 technical papers and 93 patent applications. He is co-founder of start-up companies Sentron AG, Sentronis AD, Senis AG, Ametes AG, and Sensima Technology SA. He is member of Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences, Serbian Academy of Engineering Sciences, and senior member of IEEE.
Note: In publications, Radivoje Popovic is mostly cited as R.S. Popovic, Radivoje S. Popovic, or Rade Popovic; in patents, he is cited as Popovic Radivoje. Reymond ClavelReymond CLAVEL obtained his degree in mechanical engineering at the Federal Institute of Technology of Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 1973. After nine years of gathered experience in industrial plants at Hermes Precisa International (research and development), he was appointed professor at the EPFL, where he obtained his PhD degree in parallel robotics in 1991. He was then consecutively entrusted with the following positions: Head of the department, Director of the Section of micro engineering and, in 1993, Director of the Laboratory of robotics systems (LSRO). His present research topics are parallel robotics, high speed and high precision robotics, medical and surgical robotics applications, surgical instrumentation and precision mechanisms.
Reymond Clavels research successes in parallel and industrial robotics received worldwide special mentions.
Awards :
1989: Laureate of the JIRA AWARD (Japan Industrial Robot Association) for the DELTA parallel robot invented in 1985.
1996: Project winner of the Technologiestandort Schweiz competition and ABB Sonderpreis for the best robotics project.
1998: His laboratory is awarded the Grand Prix de lInnovation in Monaco for new robot technologies.
1999: Laureate of the Golden Robot Award for the DELTA Robot.
2003: Each of his three different submitted projects received the Swiss Technology Award.
2005: Project winner of the Swiss Technology Award competition with further the Sonderpreis 2005 from the Vontobel Foundation in the field of Inventing the future.
2006: Project winner of the Swiss Technology Award competition with Quantum leap into world of nano-EDM (a new high precision EDM machine based on the Delta kinematics).
2007: Two projects based on the LSROs researches are winner of the Swiss Technology Award competition: Cyberthosis for paraplegia rehabilitation (a collaboration with the company Swortec and the Fondation Suisse pour les Cyberthèses (FSC)) and the Microfactory realized in partnership with the CSEM .
Bruno HerbelinSince 10/09 - Scientist Laboratory of cognitive neuroscience Brain & Mind Institute, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. 06/12 - 10/19 Deputy Director Center for Neuroprosthetics École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. 11/05 - 09/09 Assistant Professor Aalborg University Esbjerg Institute of Technology & Copenhagen Institute of Technology, Denmark. 07/01 - 09/05 Research assistant PhD student Virtual Reality Laboratory School of Computer and Communications, École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland.