Ronan BoulicI come from Brittany, France, where I have completed my PhD degree in Computer Science in 1986 from the University of Rennes, France, at the INRIA-IRISA research institute. I also received the Habilitation degree from the University of Grenoble, France, in march 1995. I was hired in 1989 as First Assistant in the VRLAB, I became scientific collaborator, and senior researcher. I'm presently Senior Scientist (MER) and leader of the Immersive Interaction research Group (IIG). I'm co-author of around 150 research papers among which 43 appeared in international peer-reviewed journals. I have contributed to multiple SNF projects and EU projects. Please check iig.epfl.ch for more details.
Dario FloreanoProf. Dario Floreano is director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2010, he is the founding director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics, a research program that brings together more than 20 labs across Switzerland. Prof. Floreano holds an M.A. in Vision, an M.S. in Neural Computation, and a PhD in Robotics. He has held research positions at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, at Caltech/JPL, and at Harvard University. His main research interests are Robotics and A.I. at the convergence of biology and engineering. Prof. Floreano made pioneering contributions to the fields of evolutionary robotics, aerial robotics, and soft robotics. He served in numerous advisory boards and committees, including the Future and Emerging Technologies division of the European Commission, the World Economic Forum Agenda Council, the International Society of Artificial Life, the International Neural Network Society, and in the editorial committee of several scientific journals. In addition, he helped spinning off two drone companies (senseFly.com and Flyability.com) and a non-for-profit portal on robotics and A.I. (RoboHub.org). Books
Manuale sulle Reti Neurali, il Mulino (in Italian), 1996 (first edition), 2006 (second edition)Evolutionary Robotics, MIT Press, 2000
Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press, 2008
Flying Insects and Robots, Springer Verlag, 2010
Hannes BleulerOriginaire de Zollikon (ZH), Hannes Bleuler est né en 1954 au Maroc où il passa son enfance. Après la maturité latine a Zürich, il entre au Département d'électricité à l'ETHZ. Il obtient son diplôme en automatique, en 1978, et entre en fonction comme assistant à l'Institut de mécanique de la même école.
Il y participe à l'établissement du groupe de mécatronique et obtient son doctorat dans le domaine des paliers magnétiques actifs, activité qui mène à la fondation d'une compagnie avec des collègues et à un premier séjour de deux ans chez Hitachi au Japon.
De 1991 à 1995, il est d'abord Toshiba Professor of Intelligent Mechatronics à l'institut des sciences industrielles de l'Université de Tokyo et ensuite professeur associé régulier au département de microtechnique à cette même université.
Il y travaille en microtechnique (instrumentation) et robotique. A l'EPFL, ses activités se concentrent sur la robotique biomédicale et l'interface homme-machine (interfaces haptiques) et l'entraînement et la simulation de chirurgie. Il est directeur de la section microtechnique 2008-2009. Il anime les relations et les échanges entre l'EPFL et le Japon sur tous les niveaux et donne un cours (2010) sur l'histoire des sciences au Japon dans le cadre du Collège des Humanités.