Dario FloreanoProf. Dario Floreano is director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2010, he is the founding director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics, a research program that brings together more than 20 labs across Switzerland. Prof. Floreano holds an M.A. in Vision, an M.S. in Neural Computation, and a PhD in Robotics. He has held research positions at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, at Caltech/JPL, and at Harvard University. His main research interests are Robotics and A.I. at the convergence of biology and engineering. Prof. Floreano made pioneering contributions to the fields of evolutionary robotics, aerial robotics, and soft robotics. He served in numerous advisory boards and committees, including the Future and Emerging Technologies division of the European Commission, the World Economic Forum Agenda Council, the International Society of Artificial Life, the International Neural Network Society, and in the editorial committee of several scientific journals. In addition, he helped spinning off two drone companies (senseFly.com and Flyability.com) and a non-for-profit portal on robotics and A.I. (RoboHub.org). Books
Manuale sulle Reti Neurali, il Mulino (in Italian), 1996 (first edition), 2006 (second edition)Evolutionary Robotics, MIT Press, 2000
Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press, 2008
Flying Insects and Robots, Springer Verlag, 2010
Florence Graezer BideauMaître d’enseignement et de recherche au Collège des Humanités et à la Section d'Architecture, EPFLProfesseure invitée au Département d’Architecture et de Design, Politecnico di Torino Docteure en histoire et civilisation (EHESS, Paris)Directrice du Minor in Area and Cultural Studies (MACS) entre 2012 et 2016Membre du Groupe de recherche Patrimoine, culture et villeChercheuse associée au China Room Research Group et South China-Torino Collaboration Lab, Politecnico di Torino Membre associée au Laboratoire d’anthropologie culturelle et sociale (LACS) de l’Université de LausanneMembre de la Commission de l’Ecole doctorale d’architecture et science de la ville (EDAR) de l’EPFL Florence Graezer Bideau est anthropologue, sinologue et docteur en histoire et civilisation depuis 2005. Avant de rejoindre le Centre for Area and Cultural Studies (CACS) de l’EPFL en 2010, elle a été maître assistante en anthropologie à l’Université de Lausanne où elle a enseigné dans les domaines de la théorie culturelle et de la méthodologie d’enquête de terrain. Directrice adjointe, puis Directrice du CACS entre 2012 et 2014, elle est maître d’enseignement et de recherche au sein du Collège des Humanités de l’EPFL et enseigne dans le domaine des area studies, de l’anthropologie de la Chine, des critical heritage studies et des études urbaines. Entre 2012 et 2016, elle a été directrice du Minor in Area and Cultural Studies. Depuis 2015, elle est membre de la commission de Ecole doctorale d’architecture et science de la ville (EDAR) de la Faculté de l’environnement naturel, architectural et construit (ENAC) de l’EPFL. Professeure invitée au Département d’architecture et de Design, Politecnico di Torino, Italie, depuis 2015, ses domaines d’expertise comprennent l’anthropologie de la Chine, la sociologie urbaine, les modes de sociabilité et la gouvernementalité Ses intérêts de recherche portent sur les liens entre la culture et le pouvoir (construction de la politique culturelle en Chine ; émergence des communautés de makers (makerspaces) et politique d’innovation en Chine), sur les questions patrimoniales (processus de patrimonialisation et du multiculturalisme en Malaisie et à Singapour ; mise en œuvre de la Convention de l’UNESCO pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine culturel immatériel en Suisse), ainsi que sur la fabrication de la ville (notion de paysage historique urbain dans les politiques patrimoniales à Pékin, Rome et Mexico City ; résistances informelles face à la violence de l’urbanisme à Caracas, Chennai et Guangzhou ; construction d’habitats autonomes à la suite de situations catastrophiques en Inde, au Liban et en Malaisie ; usages des espaces publics dans les nouvelles villes chinoises).
Ambrogio FasoliAmbrogio FASOLI was born on November 10, 1964, in Milano, Italy. After a classical high school diploma (Maturità Classica) and graduation from the University of Milano, with the degree of Dottore in Fisica, he obtained his Phd at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale (EPFL) with a thesis on chaos in wave-particle interactions in plasmas, which was awarded the Best EPFL Thesis prize, in 1993. He then moved to the JET Joint Undertaking, the largest worlds fusion device, near Oxford, UK, to investigate Alfvén waves and burning plasma physics. In 1995-1996 he took a sabbatical leave, visiting several Universities and Research Institutes in Europe and in the USA, including three months at General Atomics in San Diego. In 1996-1997, during a second period at JET, he participated in the fusion power worlds record experiments in Deuterium-Tritium plasmas at JET. In 1997 he was nominated Assistant Professor in MIT Physics Department, where he led a basic plasma physics group and the international collaboration between MIT and JET. In 2001 Ambrogio FASOLI was nominated Assistant Professor of Physics at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, and Professeur Boursier of the Swiss National Science Foundation. He became member of CRPP Directorate and took the leadership of CRPP basic plasma physics group and of the TCV tokamak, one of the major fusion experiments worldwide. At European level he was scientific coordinator for JET experiments, spokesperson for multi-machine experiments in the frame of International Tokamak Physics Activities, and Project Leader for a JET Enhancement project. In 2005 he became Associate Professor of Physics with tenure at EPFL, then member of EFDA Science and Technology Advisory Committee, and of the Steering Committee of the Association EURATOM-Swiss Confederation. From 2006 he was also Deputy Director, then from 2007 Executive Director of CRPP and from 2008 Full Professor of Physics at EPFL. For a number of years he was the Chair of the EPFL Physics Strategic Committee and a member of the Directorate of the EPFL School of Sciences. Since the summer of 2014 Professor FASOLI was the sole Director of CRPP. He now represents Switzerland in the EUROfusion General Assembly and Bureau, and in the Governing Board for Fusion for Energy. He is member of the EUROfusion DEMO project Board, of the Scientific Board of the Helmotz Virtual Institute on Advanced Microwave Diagnostics, of the European Delegation for the Cooperation between Euratom and the Government of India in Fusion Energy Research, of the European Consortium for the development of the ITER gyratron (EGYC), and participates to numerous international review panels. He chairs the FuseNet Academic Council, the International Advisory Panel for the Laboratory of Excellence Plas@Par in the Sorbonne Universities, the European Consortium for the construction of the ITER microwave Upper Launcher (ECHUL), and the Promotion Committee of the EPFL Faculty of Basic Sciences. He is one the three European representatives in the International Tokamak Physics Activities Coordinating Committee, advising ITER, and the Editor-in-Chief of the IAEA journal Nuclear Fusion. Since January 2019, Ambrogio Fasoli is the Chair of the General Assembly, i.e. the president of EUROfusion, the European Consortium for Development of Fusion Energy. Professor FASOLI is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and since 2001 a Visiting Professor at MIT Physics Department. He is the Director of the Swiss Plasma Center.
Jean-François MolinariProfessor J.F. Molinari is the director of the Computational Solid Mechanics Laboratory (http://lsms.epfl.ch) at EPFL, Switzerland. He holds an appointment in the Civil Engineering institute, which he directed from 2013 to 2017, and a joint appointment in the Materials Science institute. He started his tenure at EPFL in 2007, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2012. He is currently an elected member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation in Division 2 (Mathematics, Natural and Engineering Sciences), and co editor in chief of the journal Mechanics of Materials. J.F. Molinari graduated from Caltech, USA, in 2001, with a M.S. and Ph.D. in Aeronautics. He held professorships in several countries besides Switzerland, including the United States with a position in Mechanical Engineering at the Johns Hopkins University (2000-2006), and France at Ecole Normale Supérieure Cachan in Mechanics (2005-2007), as well as a Teaching Associate position at the Ecole Polytechnique de Paris (2006-2009). The work conducted by Prof. Molinari and his collaborators takes place at the frontier between traditional disciplines and covers several length scales from atomistic to macroscopic scales. Over the years, Professor Molinari and his group have been developing novel multiscale approaches for a seamless coupling across scales. The activities of the laboratory span the domains of damage mechanics of materials and structures, nano- and microstructural mechanical properties, and tribology. 