Xile HuXile Hu was born in 1978 in Putian, southeastern China. He entered the Peking University in Beijing in 1996. Besides learning too little chemistry, his biggest regret in the college was not able to correct his southern accent in Mandarin. After graduated from PKU, he went to the United States and began his doctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego. In December 2004, he finished with a Ph.D. in chemistry and some fond memories of the beautiful city of San Diego. He then moved to the Los Angeles area and become a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology. There he enjoyed numerous stimulating scientific (and other) discussions with friends and colleagues. He also made plenty of friends outside the campus and was a frequent in many local Chinese restaurants. In 2007, after two pleasant visits to Switzerland, he decided to move across the continent one more time and join the faculty of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He now directs the Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Catalysis and is interested in developing chemistry for synthesis, energy and sustainability.
Zhaofu Fei1999, Phd in Chemistry, Braunschweig, Germany,
2002, Lausanne, EPFL, Scientist.
Nava SetterNava Setter completed MSc in Civil Engineering in the Technion (Israel) and PhD in Solid State Science in Penn. State University (USA) (1980). After post-doctoral work at the Universities of Oxford (UK) and Geneva (Switzerland), she joined an R&D institute in Haifa (Israel) where she became the head of the Electronic Ceramics Lab (1988). She began her affiliation with EPFL in 1989 as the Director of the Ceramics Laboratory, becoming Full Professor of Materials Science and Engineering in 1992. She had been Head of the Materials Department in the past and more recently has served as the Director of the Doctoral School for Materials.
Research at the Ceramics Laboratory, which Nava Setter directs, concerns the science and technology of functional ceramics focusing on piezoelectric and related materials: ferroelectrics, dielectrics, pyroelectrics and also ferromagnetics. The work includes fundamental and applied research and covers the various scales from the atoms to the final devices. Emphasis is given to micro- and nano-fabrication technology with ceramics and coupled theoretical and experimental studies of the functioning of ferroelectrics.
Her own research interests include ferroelectrics and piezoelectrics: in particular the effects of interfaces, finite-size and domain-wall phenomena, as well as structure-property relations and the pursuit of new applications. The leading thread in her work over the years has been the demonstration of how basic or fundamental concepts in materials - particularly ferroelectrics - can be utilized in a new way and/or in new types of devices. She has published over 450 scientific and technical papers.
Nava Setter is a Fellow of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences, the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and the World Academy of Ceramics. Among the awards she received are the Swiss-Korea Research Award, the ISIF outstanding achievement award, and the Ferroelectrics-IEEE recognition award. In 2010 her research was recognized by the European Union by the award of an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant. Recently she received the IEEE-UFFC Achievement Award (2011),the W.R. Buessem Award(2011), the Robert S. Sosman Award Lecture (American Ceramics Society) (2013), and the American Vacuum Society Recognition for Excellence in Leadership (2013).
Aleksandra RadenovicFrom April 2021 Full Professor 2015 -2021 Associate Professor2008-2015 Tenure-Track Assistant Professor2004-2007 Postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley in the group of Prof.Liphardt2003 PhD student of Prof. Dietler in Laboratory of Physics of Living Matter, University of Lausanne 1999 Diploma thesis on the subject of the Raman spectroscopy of beta carotene1994-1999 Physics department at the University of Zagreb1994 baccalaureate, Classical gymnasium
Anders MeibomAnders Meibom obtained his PhD in physics from the University of Southern Denmark in 1997. This was followed by two and a half years of PostDoc work at the Hawaii Institute for Geophysics and Planetology, where he conducted mineralogical studies of primitive chondritic meteorites. From 2000 to 2005, he was Research Associate in the Geological & Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, where he represented Stanford in the USGS-Stanford ion microprobe laboratory. In 2005, he became proifessor at the Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle in Paris. From 2006 to 2011 he was the director of the French national NanoSIMS laboratory. Since January 2012, he is professor at the EPFL in the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC). From April 2014, he is professor ad personam at the Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Lausanne.
Alfredo PasquarelloAlfredo Pasquarello effectue ses études en physique à l'Ecole normale supérieure de Pise et à l'Université de Pise et obtient leurs diplômes respectifs en 1986. Il obtient le titre de Docteur ès sciences à l'EPFL en 1991 avec une thèse portant sur les transitions à plusieurs photons dans les solides. Ensuite, il effectue des recherches post-doctorales aux Laboratoires Bell (Murray Hill, New Jersey) sur les propriétés magnétiques des fullerènes de carbone. En 1993, il rejoint l'Institut romand de recherche numérique en physique des matériaux (IRRMA), où sa recherche porte sur des méthodes de simulation ab initio. En 1998, le Prix Latsis de l'EPFL lui est decerné pour son travail de recherche portant sur les matériaux à base de silice désordonnée. Bénéficiant de plusieurs subsides du Fonds National, il constitue ensuite sa propre équipe de recherche à l'IRRMA. En juillet 2003, il est nommé Professeur en Physique théorique de la matière condensée à l'EPFL. Actuellement, il dirige la Chaire de simulation à l'échelle atomique.
Raphaël ButtéRaphaël Butté was born in Paris, France, in 1973. He received the PhD degree from the University Claude Bernard, Lyon, France, in 2000 for his research on the structural and optoelectronic properties of hydrogenated nanostructured silicon thin films with potential applications for photovoltaics and thin film transistors. He then moved to the University of Sheffield (2000-2003), UK, to work as postdoctoral research associate in the group of Prof. Maurice S. Skolnick (Fellow of the Royal Society). His research shifted to the optical properties of III-V semiconductors with a main focus on the nonlinear optical properties of cavity polaritons occurring in GaAs-based microcavities driven under resonant optical excitation. In 2004, he moved to Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) as scientific collaborator in charge of optical spectroscopy at LASPE (http://laspe.epfl.ch/), a newly established laboratory directed by Prof. Nicolas Grandjean. In 2010, he became permanent member of staff (Scientific Collaborator and Lecturer). He was promoted to the position of Senior Scientist in 2016. His current research activity deals with planar waveguides, microdisks and photonic crystals made from III-nitride semiconductors. In particular, he is leading the activity focusing on: (i) the physics of exciton-polaritons in planar waveguides and (ii) high-β photonic crystal nanolasers. He is the author of 119 scientific articles published in peer-reviewed international journals, 14 publications published in peer reviewed journals following an international conference (Web of Science > 4500 citations, h-index: 36; Google Scholar > 6200 citations, h-index: 42) and 6 book chapters. He has given 30 invited talks in International Conferences/Winter-Summer Schools/Workshops. He has been the Publications Chair/Guest Editor of the Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Nitride semiconductors (IWN2008) and also served as Scientific Secretary of IWN2008 and of the 5th International Conference on Spontaneous Coherence in Excitonic Systems (ICSCE5). In 2012, he was one of the 149 scientists recognized by the Outstanding Referee program (http://publish.aps.org/OutstandingReferees) of the American Physical Society (APS) selected from a pool of roughly 60,000 currently active referees. Since September 2019, he is an Editorial Board Member of the newly launched open access APS journal, Physical Review Research. From September 2013 until December 2017, he was one of the Editors of the journal "Superlattices and Microstructures" (Elsevier). Since September 2015 he is a member of the Physics Doctoral School Teaching Committee. He was also a member of the EPFL Teaching Conference from September 2015 until August 2017. 