Daniel FavratDaniel Favrat a obtenu à l'EPFL son diplôme d'ingénieur mécanicien en 1972 et le titre de docteur ès sciences techniques en 1976.
Il passe ensuite 12 ans dans des centres de recherche industriels au Canada et en Suisse.Depuis 1988, D. Favrat est professeur et directeur du Laboratoire d'énergétique industrielle à l'EPFL. Il est aussi successivement directeur de l'Institut des Sciences de l'énergie et, dès janvier 2007, de l'Institut de Génie Mécanique. Ses recherches portent sur les analyses systémiques prenant en compte l'énergétique, l'environnement et l'économie (optimisation environomique), et les systèmes avancés pour une utilisation plus rationnelle de l'énergie (pompes à chaleur, moteurs, piles à combustible,turbomachines etc.)
Il est membre de l'Académie Suisse des Sciences Techniques et vice-président du comité énergie de la Fédération Mondiale des Organisations d'Ingénieurs. Il est éditeur associé du journal "Energy" et l'auteur de deux livres sur la thermodynamique et l'énergétique publiés aux Presses Polytechniques Universitaires Romandes.
Jürg Alexander SchiffmannAfter obtaining his diploma in mechanical engineering from EPFL in 1999 he co-founded a start-up company dedicated to the design of gas bearing supported rotors. In 2005 he joined Fischer Engineering Solutions where he led the development of small-scale, gas bearing supported high-speed turbomachinery for fuel cell air supplies and for domestic scale heat pumps. In parallel he worked on his PhD, which he obtained from EPFL in 2008 and for which he was awarded the SwissElectric Research Award. He then joined the Gas Turbine Lab at MIT as a postdoctoral associate where he worked on foil bearings and on the experimental investigation of radial diffusers. In 2013 he was nominated assistant professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne where he founds the Laboratory for Applied Mechanical Design. His current research interest are in gas lubricated bearings, in aerodynamics of small-scale compressors and turbines and in automated design and optimization methodologies.
Paolo RicciPaolo Ricci earned his masters degree in nuclear engineering at the Politecnico di Torino, Turin (Italy) in 2000. His doctoral studies were conducted at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, with focus on kinetic simulation of magnetic reconnection in the Earth's magnetotail. He spent two-and-a-half years as a postdoctoral researcher at Dartmouth College's Department of Physics and Astronomy, where he worked on gyrokinetic simulations of the Z pinch. He joined the EPFL's Swiss Plasma Center (SPC), as a EURATOM fellow in 2006, was named Tenure Track Assistant Professor in June 2010, and Associate Professor in August 2016. He is at the head of the SPC theory group. Paolo Ricci is the recipient of the 2016 Section de Physique Teaching Prize and of the 2021 Craie d'Or award from the EPFL physics bachelor students.