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
Luca Giovanni PattaroniSuite à une formation en Relations Internationales (Institut des Hautes Etudes Internationales, Genève) et un DEA en sciences sociales (Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris/Ulm), Luca Pattaroni a soutenu une thèse de sociologie en cotutelle (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris/ Université de Genève) sous la direction de Laurent Thévenot (EHESS) et Jean Kellerhals (Université de Genève). Après avoir occupé durant 5 ans un poste d'assistant à la Faculté de Droit (Université de Genève), il a été visiting scholar à lUniversité de Columbia (New York). Il travaille désormais au Laboratoire de Sociologie Urbaine (EPFL) et est associé au Groupe de Sociologie Politique et Morale de l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (GSPM/EHESS). En 2011, il a été Professeur invité à l'Université Fédérale de Fluminense (Brésil). Ses recherches et publications portent sur les politiques urbaines et culturelles, l’habitat, les mouvements sociaux, les rythmes urbains et les grandes manifestation, l’évolution des modes de vie ainsi que, plus largement les enjeux du commun dans les villes contemporaines. Spécialiste des méthodes mixtes ainsi que de théorie sociologique et politique, il cherche à articuler une analyse fine du pluralisme des modes de vie et un questionnement sur les enjeux politiques et moraux de la composition dun monde commun.
Christophe AnceyChristophe Ancey has both a PhD and an engineering degree granted by the Ecole Centrale de Paris and the Grenoble National Polytechnic Institute. Trained as a hydraulics engineer, he did his doctoral work under the supervision of Pierre Evesque from 1994 to 1997 on rheology of granular flows in simple shearing. He was recruited in 1998 as a researcher in rheology at the Cemagref as part of the Erosion Protection team directed by Jean-Pierre Feuvrier, which has since become the laboratoire "Storm Erosion, Snow and Avalanche Laboratory". Parallel to this research activity, with Claude Charlier He set up a consulting firm for engineering contracting called Toraval (www.toraval.fr), which has become the major player in the avalanche field in France. Since 2004, He is a fluid-mechanics professor at EPFL and he is the director of the Environmental Hydraulics Laboratory.
He is associate editor of Water Resources Research, one of the leading journal in the field. Hilal Lashuel2012-2013 Visiting Professor, Standford University. Stanford School of Medicine
2011- Associate Professor of Life Sciences-Brain Mind Institute-EPFL
Dir. Laboratory of Chemical Biology of Neurodegeneration
2005-2011 Assistant Professor of Life Sciences-Brain Mind Institute-EPFL
Dir. Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Neuroproteomics
2005-2008 Director- EPFL Proteomic Core Facility
2002-2004 Instructor of Neurology- Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's
Hospital
2001-2002 Sabbatical Fellow- Laboratory for Drug Discovery in Neurodegeneration
Harvard Medical School,
2001-2002 Post-doctoral Fellow- Center for Neurologic Diseases
Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital
Advisor- Prof. Peter T. Lansbury
2000-2001 Research Scientist, The Picower Institute for Medical Research, Great Neck
New York
1994-2000 PhD Student; Texas A&M University and the Scripps Research Institute
Advisor- Prof. Jeffery W. Kelly
1990-1994 B.S. City University of New York, Brooklyn College
Dr. Hilal A. Lashuel received his B.Sc. degree in chemistry from the City University of New York in 1994 and completed his doctoral studies at Texas A&M University and the Scripps Research Institute in 2000. After obtaining his doctoral degree, he became a research fellow at the Picower Institute for Medical Research in Long Island New York. In 2001, he moved to Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women's Hospital as a research fellow in the Center for Neurologic Diseases and was later promoted to an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School. During his tenure (2001-2004) at Harvard Medical School his work focused on understanding the mechanisms of protein misfolding and fibrillogenesis and the role of these processes in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. In 2005 Dr. Lashuel moved Switzerland to join the Brain Mind Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne as a tenure-track assistant professor in neurosciences. Currently, Dr. Lashuel is an associate professor of life sciences and the director of the laboratory of molecular and chemical biology of neurodegeneration. (http://lashuel-lab.epfl.ch/).
Research efforts in the Lashuels laboratory focus on understanding the molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration and developing novel strategies to diagnose and treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease. Research in the Lashuel lab is funded by several international funding agencies and foundations, including the Swiss National Science Foundation, European FP7 program (Marie Curie and ERC grants), Human Science Frontiers, Strauss Foundation, Cure the Huntingtons disease foundation and Michael J Fox foundation and is supported by collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech companies (http://lashuel-lab.epfl.ch/page-50538-en.html), Nestle, Merck-Serono, AC Immune and Johnson and Johnson.
Dr. Lashuels research has resulted in the characterization of novel quaternary structure intermediates on the amyloid pathway, identification of potential therapeutic targets, and new hypotheses concerning the mechanisms of pathogenesis in Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease and related disorders. Dr. Lashuel scientific contribution to this field includes i) more than100 publications in major peer reviewed journals including Nature journals, Cell, PNAS, JBC, J. Neuroscience JACS, and Angewandtie Chemie; ii) three patents on novel strategies for preventing protein aggregation and treating autoimmune and inflammatory diseases; iii) more than 150 invited lectures since 2002 and more than 5500 citations (7800 citation-Google Scholar) since 1996. Dr. Lashuel has received several pre-doctoral and post-doctoral awards and fellowships and was the recipient of two prestigious awards given to young investigators; Human Science Frontiers young investigator research award and the European Research Council (ERC) starting independent researcher grant and the ERC proof of concept award (2013) These awards provide more than $2.5 Million to Dr. Lashuel to translate some of his ideas and projects into novel strategies for diagnosing and treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease. Dr. Lashuel has chaired and co-organized several international conferences and serves as an academic editor for PLoS ONE, an associate editor for frontiers of molecular neuroscience, member of the Editorial advisory board of ChemBioChem and ad hoc reviewer for several international scientific journals and funding agencies. Florence Graezer BideauMaître d’enseignement et de recherche au Collège des Humanités et à la Section d'Architecture, EPFLProfesseure invitée au Département d’Architecture et de Design, Politecnico di Torino Docteure en histoire et civilisation (EHESS, Paris)Directrice du Minor in Area and Cultural Studies (MACS) entre 2012 et 2016Membre du Groupe de recherche Patrimoine, culture et villeChercheuse associée au China Room Research Group et South China-Torino Collaboration Lab, Politecnico di Torino Membre associée au Laboratoire d’anthropologie culturelle et sociale (LACS) de l’Université de LausanneMembre de la Commission de l’Ecole doctorale d’architecture et science de la ville (EDAR) de l’EPFL Florence Graezer Bideau est anthropologue, sinologue et docteur en histoire et civilisation depuis 2005. Avant de rejoindre le Centre for Area and Cultural Studies (CACS) de l’EPFL en 2010, elle a été maître assistante en anthropologie à l’Université de Lausanne où elle a enseigné dans les domaines de la théorie culturelle et de la méthodologie d’enquête de terrain. Directrice adjointe, puis Directrice du CACS entre 2012 et 2014, elle est maître d’enseignement et de recherche au sein du Collège des Humanités de l’EPFL et enseigne dans le domaine des area studies, de l’anthropologie de la Chine, des critical heritage studies et des études urbaines. Entre 2012 et 2016, elle a été directrice du Minor in Area and Cultural Studies. Depuis 2015, elle est membre de la commission de Ecole doctorale d’architecture et science de la ville (EDAR) de la Faculté de l’environnement naturel, architectural et construit (ENAC) de l’EPFL. Professeure invitée au Département d’architecture et de Design, Politecnico di Torino, Italie, depuis 2015, ses domaines d’expertise comprennent l’anthropologie de la Chine, la sociologie urbaine, les modes de sociabilité et la gouvernementalité Ses intérêts de recherche portent sur les liens entre la culture et le pouvoir (construction de la politique culturelle en Chine ; émergence des communautés de makers (makerspaces) et politique d’innovation en Chine), sur les questions patrimoniales (processus de patrimonialisation et du multiculturalisme en Malaisie et à Singapour ; mise en œuvre de la Convention de l’UNESCO pour la sauvegarde du patrimoine culturel immatériel en Suisse), ainsi que sur la fabrication de la ville (notion de paysage historique urbain dans les politiques patrimoniales à Pékin, Rome et Mexico City ; résistances informelles face à la violence de l’urbanisme à Caracas, Chennai et Guangzhou ; construction d’habitats autonomes à la suite de situations catastrophiques en Inde, au Liban et en Malaisie ; usages des espaces publics dans les nouvelles villes chinoises).
Anders MeibomAnders Meibom obtained his PhD in physics from the University of Southern Denmark in 1997. This was followed by two and a half years of PostDoc work at the Hawaii Institute for Geophysics and Planetology, where he conducted mineralogical studies of primitive chondritic meteorites. From 2000 to 2005, he was Research Associate in the Geological & Environmental Sciences, Stanford University, where he represented Stanford in the USGS-Stanford ion microprobe laboratory. In 2005, he became proifessor at the Muséum National dHistoire Naturelle in Paris. From 2006 to 2011 he was the director of the French national NanoSIMS laboratory. Since January 2012, he is professor at the EPFL in the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC). From April 2014, he is professor ad personam at the Institute of Earth Sciences, University of Lausanne.
Andrew Charles OatesAfter an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry at the University of Adelaide with Honours in Robert Saint’s lab, Andrew Oates received his Ph.D. at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research and the University of Melbourne in the lab of Andrew Wilks. His postdoctoral time was at Princeton University and the University of Chicago in the lab of Robert Ho, where his studies on the segmentation clock in zebrafish began in 1998. In 2003 he moved to Germany and started his group at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden. In 2012 he accepted a position at University College London as Professor of vertebrate developmental genetics and moved his group to the MRC-National Institute for Medical Research at Mill Hill in London. From April 2015, he became a member of the Francis Crick Institute in London. In September 2016, he joined École polytechnique fédéral de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland as a Professor, where he is the head of the Timing, Oscillation, Patterns Laboratory. From April 2018 he served as Director of the Institute of Bioengineering, and from January 2021 became the Dean of the School of Life Sciences.
The Timing, Oscillation, Patterns Laboratory is composed of biologists, engineers, and physicists using molecular genetics, quantitative imaging, and theoretical analysis to study a population of coupled genetic oscillators in the vertebrate embryo termed the segmentation clock. This system drives the rhythmic, sequential, and precise formation of embryonic body segments, exhibiting rich spatial and temporal phenomena spanning from molecular to tissue scales.
