César PulgarinProf. C. Pulgarin is Chemist from Lausanne University, Master in environmental chemistry from Geneva University, Ph D in synthesis bio-inspired of natural substances from Neuchâtel University. During his education he carried out several industrial trainings.
Since March 1989, he has been working at the EPFL where he is leader of the Advanced Oxidation Processes Group (GPAO) active in the development chemical, photochemical, electrochemical, ultrasonic processes, their coupling between them and with biological systems to degrade chemical and microbiological pollutants in water and air. He has an H index of 40 and he is the world most cited author in 1) TiO2 photo-assisted bacterial inactivation in water and 2) Coupling of photochemical and biological processes for pollutant degradation. He has been involved in ten African, South American and European international research projects. He has been Swiss representative in COST program 540.
Lyesse LalouiDirector, EPFL Soil Mechanics LaboratoryDirector, EPFL Civil Engineering SectionEditor in Chief, ElsevierMember of the Swiss Academy of Engineering SciencesFounding Partner, Geoeg & MeduSoilActive in academic research in the following institutions: Lausanne, EPFL, Durham, Duke University, Nanjing, Hohai UniversityProfessor Lyesse Laloui teaches at EPFL, where he directs the Soil Mechanics Laboratory as well as the Civil Engineering Section. He is a founding partner of the international engineering company Geoeg, and the start-up MeduSoil. In addition, he is an adjunct professor at Duke University, USA and an advisory professor at Hohai University, China as well as honorary director of the International Joint Research Center for Energy Geotechnics in China.He is the recipient of an Advance ERC grant for his BIO-mediated GEO-material Strengthening project. Editor in Chief of the Elsevier Geomechanics for Energy and the Environment journal, he is a leading scientist in the field of geomechanics and geo-energy. He has written and edited 13 books and published over 320 peer reviewed papers; his work is cited more than 6000 times with an h-index of 39 (Scopus). Two of his papers are among the top 1% in the academic field of Engineering. He has given keynote and invited lectures at more than 40 leading international conferences. He has received several international awards (IACMAG, RM Quigley, Roberval) and delivered honorary lectures (Vardoulakis, Minnesota; G.A. Leonards, Purdue; Kersten, Minnesota). He recently acted as the Chair of the international evaluation panel of Civil and Geological Engineering R&D Units of Portugal.Nov. 2019 For further information visit www.epfl.ch/labs/lms/ ; geoeg.net ; medusoil.com Anna Carratala RipollesDuring my PhD, I mainly focused on characterizing the effect of environmental factors (namely temperature and sunlight) and disinfectants on the stability of human viral pathogens as contaminants of aquatic environments. In addition,I developed a novel source tracking tool to identify avian fecal contamination in environmental samples. Thanks to a research fellowship given by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology, I also had the opportunity to explore the diversity of marine viruses in Mediterranean coastal waters by genetic fingerprinting and by next generation sequencing. Later on, I became interested in the long-term effect of environmental stressors on virus communities, so I joined the LCE as a postdoc to investigate the adaptation of enteroviruses to ultraviolet radiation. For 4 years, I worked on developing UV-resistant viruses and characterizing their acquired phenotypic and genetic properties by combining directed evolution experiments, deep sequencing and population genetics. Out of the lab, I am passionate about nature, traveling and scuba diving.
Benoît Jean Dominique FerrariBiologiste et biochimiste de formation, Benoît J.D. Ferrari a obtenu son diplôme de doctorat en Ecotoxicologie à lUniversité de Lorraine (Metz, France) en 2000 en travaillant sur le développement dune approche dévaluation du danger écotoxique des déchets solides utilisant une batterie de bioessais dans le cadre dun projet interdisciplinaire suivi par lAgence de lEnvironnement et de la Maîtrise de lEnergie (ADEME). Après avoir passé presque 7 années à Irstea (anciennement Cemagref) à Lyon en France (périodes 2000-2002 et 2008-2013) et avoir occupé un poste de Maitre-assistant à lInstitut F.A. Forel à Genève (2002-2008), il a acquis au travers des projets franco-suisses et européens quil a (co-)pilotés une expérience forte dans le domaine de lécotoxicologie et dans les approches pluridisciplinaires. En Octobre 2013, il rejoint le Centre Suisse dEcotoxicologie Appliquée (Centre Ecotox Eawag/EPFL) en tant que responsable du groupe Sol et Sédiment. Sintéressant à létude de lécodynamique des contaminants et leurs effets sur lécophysiologie des organismes, ses compétences et ses thématiques de recherche appliquée couvrent aujourdhui :
Le développement dindicateurs écotoxicologiques dexposition et deffets pour évaluer le stresse chimique
Lintégration des indicateurs écotoxicologiques dans des approches de laboratoire et de terrain pour le diagnostic de la qualité des écosystèmes
Le développement de bioessais adaptés pour le biomonitoring actif
Le transfert de compétence vers la sphère opérationnelle (formation).
