Urs von StockarOriginaire de Zurich, Urs von Stockar est né en1942. Ingénieur chimiste diplômé de l'EPFZ en 1967, il y est ensuite assistant au Laboratoire de chimie technique et, en 1973, soutient sa thèse couronnée par la médaille d'argent de l'EPFZ.
De 1973 à 1976, il travaille au département de génie chimique de l'Université de Californie. Il y enseigne et participe au développement d'un procédé technique pour la conversion biologique de la cellulose en alcool.
En 1977, il est ingénieur chimiste chez Ciba-Geigy. Fin 1977 il est nommé professeur extraordinaire à l'EPFL. Il dirige l'Institut de génie chimique en 1978/79 et en 1989/90. Il est professeur ordinaire en 1982. En 1982/83 et 1993/95, il dirige le Département de chimie. Son enseignement et sa recherche traitent des opérations de transfert de masse et de la biotechnologie, il s'intéresse également aux questions de bioénergétique et de biothermodynamique. Collaborant avec l'UNIL et l'ISREC, son équipe développe des procédés de fabrication d'anticorps monoclônaux spéciaux, capables de protéger les muqueuses humaines. En 1990 il est nommé professeur associé à l'Université de Genève. Il représente la Suisse dans un groupe d'experts de la Fédération européenne de biotechnologie. Après avoir siégé pendant plusieurs années dans son Comité de direction, il a été nommé président de la Fédération Européenne de Biotechnologie pour la période 1996-97. Depuis 1991, il dirige le Comité de coordination suisse pour la biotechnologie.
Diploma in Chemical Eng.-1967-ETHZ, CH
Ph.D.-1972-ETHZ, CH
Postdoc. Fellow-1973-76-Univ. of California, Berkeley, US
Peter MonkewitzAfter graduating in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, he received his Ph.D. from the same institution in 1977 with a thesis on internal acoustics. From 1977-80 he was a research associate in the Aerospace Department of the Univ. of Southern California in Los Angeles, where he worked experimentally and theoretically on jet noise and hydrodynamic instabilities. In 1980 he joined the faculty of the School of Engineering at UCLA where he made research contributions in several areas. In the field of hydrodynamic instability he had a hand in the popularization of the concept of absolute instability in fluid mechanics, the development of the concept as well as of the asymptotic analytical description of global modes in nonparallel flows, and in the modelling of vortex shedding from bluff bodies. Other areas of research include internal acoustics, jet mixing, in particular in low-density jets in which he co-discovered enhanced mixing by "side-jets," flow control, transition to turbulence, turbulence and, most recently, flame instabilities. In 1988 he was awarded the Humboldt prize and spent the academic year 1989/90 as Humboldt awardee at the Technical University in Berlin. In 1992 he was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society. Since 1993 he holds the chair for experimental fluid mechanics and heads the Laboratory of Fluid Mechanics (LMF) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. He has been Chairman of its Mechanical Engineering Department from July 1997 to December 2000, co-organizer of the 1999 Research programme on turbulence at the Isaac Newton Institute in Cambridge, UK, Associate Editor of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics from 1995 to 2000 and a member of the EUROMECH Council. He is currently an Associate Editor of Physics of Fluids , a member of the IUTAM general assembly, a member of the schoolwide EPFL Academic Promotions Committee and part-time "program monitor" for the Swiss National Science Foundation (member of its Research Council).
