Dominique Pioletti received his Master in Physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) in 1992. He pursued his education in the same Institution and obtained his PhD in biomechanics in 1997. He developed original constitutive laws taking into account viscoelasticity in large deformations. Then he spent two years at UCSD as post-doc fellow acquiring know-how in cell and molecular biology. He was interested in particular to gene expression of bone cells in contact to orthopedic implant. In April 2006, Dominique Pioletti was appointed Assistant Professor tenure-track at the EPFL and is director of the Laboratory of Biomechanical Orthopedics. His research topics include biomechanics and tissue engineering of musculo-skeletal tissues; mechano-transduction in bone; development of orthopedic implant as drug delivery system. Since 2013, he has been promoted to the rank of Associate Professor.
Matthias Lutolf is Full Professor at EPFL’s Institute of Bioengineering, with a cross appointment in the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering. Lutolf was trained as a Materials Engineer at ETH Zurich where he also carried out his PhD studies (with Jeffrey Hubbell) that were awarded with an ETH medal. He continued his research training as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Stem Cell Biology (with Helen Blau) at Stanford University. He has served as the Director of the Institute of Bioengineering from 2014 to 2018. Lutolf is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of stem cell bioengineering and tissue engineering. His research program uniquely combines stem cell biology with engineering principles and quantitative thinking. His team, composed of engineers, chemists, physicists, cell and developmental biologists, strives to develop technologies that have true biological and medicinal function and applicability. Lutolf’s work has led to more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific publications, many of which published in highly reputed journals, more than 25 patents, and the commercialization of several products. Current research in the Lutolf lab is focused on the bioengineering of miniature tissues, termed organoids, that are generated from self-organizing stem cells.
Daniel Constam received his doctoral degree in Natural Sciences from ETH Zürich in the neuroimmunology group of Adriano Fontana (1993). For postdoctoral studies, he joined the laboratory of Elizabeth Robertson as an EMBO fellow at Harvard University to characterize proprotein convertase (PC) functions in mouse models of early embryogenesis (1994-1999). As an ISREC group leader (>2000) and Associate Professor at EPFL (>2007), he initially continued to study pluripotency and lineage differentiation during development and found that several secreted PCs jointly regulate cell-cell adhesion and TGFβ signaling pathways at the cross-roads of stem cell and cancer biology. To map the proteolytic activity of PCs and their relative distribution in exocytic or endocytic vesicles, his lab developed PC-specific FRET sensors for high resolution live imaging in normal cells and in tumour-host interactions. His studies on TGFβ signaling also identified the RNA-binding protein Bicc1 and its self-polymerization in membrane-less organelles as regulators of mRNA translation and cell metabolism that cooperate with primary cilia to prevent cystic growth in renal tubules and in pancreatic and bile ducts.
Background 1990 Ingénieur en science des matériaux 1993 PhD in materials science Activities 1993-1994 Research at the Center for Composite Materials, University of Delaware, USA (ccm.udel.edu), SNSF grant Since 1994 Research and teaching at EPFL, Composites, (LTC, LPAC) 1995-1999 Coordination Swiss Priority Program on Materials research: 2.2: Composites Since 1998 Biocomposites 2004-2009 Direction of the EPFL Transdisciplinary programme in Sport and Rehabilitation 2005-2008 Member of the EPFL Vice-Presidency for Innovation and Valorisation and direction a.i.EPFL-LTC Since 2016 Direction Discovery Learning Labs Materials/Bioengineering and Engineering
Freddy Radtke obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Zürich in 1994. In 1995, he started his postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Michel Aguet at Genentech, Inc. (San Francisco, USA). In 1997, he returned to Switzerland with Michel Aguet and finished his postdoctoral fellowship at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in Lausanne. From 1999‑2005, he was a group leader and Associate Member at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research. Freddy Radtke then joined ISREC in January 2006 as a senior scientist and in July 2006, he was appointed Associate Professor at the EPFL School of Life Sciences
Dr. Michel Aguet, MD, held positions in academia and industry (Associate Professor at the Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Zürich; Head of Molecular Oncology, Genentech, So. San Francisco) before he was appointed director of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) (1996-2009). In the context of the integration of ISREC into the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), he was appointed as Full Professor at the newly established School of Life Sciences in 2005. From 2001-2013 he directed the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Molecular Oncology, a national program launched by the Swiss National Science Foundation to encourage translational cancer research and for which ISREC was the leading house. Dr. Aguet has been a SAB member in the pharmaceutical industry, biotech industry and venture capital industry since 1997.
A large part of his scientific career was devoted to exploring the molecular biology of interferons (cloning of the interferon gamma receptor, generation of various interferon signaling mutants in the mouse) and, in collaboration with Prof. Charles Weissmann, to investigating the role of prion related protein PrP in mouse prion disease models. In recent years his research focused on characterizing the role of BCL9 proteins, which are part of the Wnt/beta-catenin transcriptional activation complex, in regulating stem cell traits in intestinal epithelium and colorectal cancer. His laboratory is now closed due to retirement.
Denis Duboule est né en 1955. De Nationalités Suisse et Française, il étudie la biologie à lUniversité de Genève où il reçoit un PhD dans le domaine de lembryologie des mammifères en 1984. Il passe ensuite 10 ans à létranger, dabord comme post-doc et group leader à la faculté de Médecine de Strasbourg (CNRS), puis au Laboratoire Européen de Biologie Moléculaire, à Heidelberg (Allemagne). En 1993, il est nommé Professeur ordinaire à lUniversité de Genève, où il dirige le département de Génétique et Evolution depuis 1997. En 2001 il prend la direction du pôle dexcellence NCCR aux Frontières de la Génétique et celle de la division médecine-Biologie du FNS en 2012. En 2006, il est nommé Professeur ordinaire à lEPFL, Lausanne, où il dirige le laboratoire de Génomique du Développement (UpDUB).
Ses activités de recherche sexercent dans le domaine de lembryologie, de la génétique et de la génomique du développement des mammifères, dans le contexte général de lEvolution des structures et des organes. En particulier, son laboratoire a été associé à de nombreuses recherches dans le domaine de lanalyse structurelle et fonctionnelle des gènes architectes (Hox) et de leur régulation transcriptionnelle pendant le développement précoce. Denis Duboule est également actif dans le domaine de la communication de la science. Il est membre de lAcademia Europea ainsi que dautres académies. Il est également membre de lInstitut de France (Académie des Sciences), de la Société Royale (UK) et de lAcadémie des Sciences Américaine (NAS). Il a reçu plusieurs prix et distinction, notamment le Prix Marcel Benoist, le Prix Louis-Jeantet de Médecine en 1998 et le Prix international de lINSERM en 2010. Voir également https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_Duboule. 