Klaus KernKlaus Kern is Professor of Physics at EPFL and Director and Scientific Member at the Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany. He also is Honorary Professor at the University of Konstanz, Germany. His present research interests are in nanoscale science, quantum technology and in microscopy at the atomic limits of space and time. He holds a chemistry degree and PhD from the University of Bonn and a honorary doctors degree from the University of Aalborg. After his doctoral studies he was staff scientist at the Research Center Jülich and visiting scientist at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill before joining the Faculty of EPFL in 1991 and the Max-Planck-Society in 1998. Professor Kern has authored and coauthored close to 700 scientific publications, which have received nearly 60‘000 citations. He has served frequently on advisory committees to universities, professional societies and institutions and has received numerous scientific awards and honors, including the 2008 Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Prize and the 2016 Van‘t Hoff Prize. Prof. Kern has also educated a large number of leading scientists in nanoscale physics and chemistry. During the past twenty-five years he has supervised one hundred PhD students and sixty postdoctoral fellows. Today, more than fifty of his former students and postdocs hold prominent faculty positions at Universities around the world.
Françoise Gisou van der Goot GrunbergGisou van der Goot est responsable du Laboratoire de Biologie Cellulaire et Membranaire et co-fondatrice de l'Institut dInfectiologie, à la Faculté des Sciences de la Vie de l'EPFL.Depuis 2021, Prof. van der Goot est Vice-présidente pour la transformation responsable, moteur du changement de l’EPFL vers une culture inclusive et un campus durable. De 2014 à 2020, Prof. van der Goot a occupé la fonction de Doyenne de cette même Faculté.Avant sa nomination à l'EPFL, en 2006, elle était Cheffe de Groupe à la Faculté des Sciences de lUniversité de Genève (UNIGE), puis Professeure Associée à la Faculté de Médecine. Prof. van der Goot a d'abord obtenu un diplôme dIngénieur de l'Ecole Centrale de Paris avant dentamer une thèse en Biophysique Moléculaire au CEA de Saclay (Université de Paris VI), suivie dun séjour postdoctoral au Laboratoire Européen de Biologie Moléculaire (EMBL) à Heidelberg (Allemagne). Différentes distinctions lui ont été décernées, dont, en 2001, le Prix Young Investigator de l'EMBO (Organisation européenne de Biologie Moléculaire), puis, en 2005, le soutien par le programme international du Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI, Etats-Unis); en 2009, elle a été la première femme à obtenir le Prix Marcel Benoist. La même année, elle est élue membre de lEMBO. Les domaines dexpertise du Prof. van der Goot incluent les mécanismes moléculaires et cellulaires des toxines bactériennes, l'organisation des membranes (des mammifères) et la biologie des organelles. Prof. van der Goot est membre du conseil scientifique de diverses organisations telles que le Fonds National Suisse de la Recherche Scientifique (SNF), le Conseil Suisse de la Science et de la Technologie (CSST) et le Conseil Européen de la Recherche (ERC).
Patrick Daniel BarthProfessor Patrick Barth is Associate Professor at EPFL and Adjunct Associate Professor at Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, TX, USA. He received training in Physics, Chemistry and Biology (University of Paris, ENS) in France and performed his PhD at the Commissiariat a l'Energie Atomique in Saclay, France on structure/function studies of membrane proteins (photosystem I) using biochemical and biophysical experimental techniques. He carried out postdoctoral studies at University of California at Berkeley with Tom Alber on computational development for calculating protein electrostatics and designing de novo selective peptide inhibitors of cellular protein interactions. He then went to the University of Washington as a postdoctoral fellow and instructor in David Baker's laboratory to develop computational techniques in the software Rosetta for predicting and designing membrane protein structures. He started his independent career and received tenure at Baylor College of Medicine. He will continue at EPFL to marry computation and experiment for understanding the molecular determinants of signal transduction, as well as modeling and designing membrane proteins with novel functions for various synthetic biology and therapeutic applications.
Bruno Emanuel Ferreira De Sousa CorreiaThroughout my PhD and postdoctoral studies I was trained in world-renowned laboratories and institutions in the United States of America (University of Washington and The Scripps Research Institute). Very early in my scientific career I found out my fascination about protein structure and function. My PhD studies evolved in the direction of immunogen design and vaccine engineering which sparked my interest in the many needs and opportunities in vaccinology and translational research. My efforts resulted in an enlightening piece of work where for the first time, computationally designed immunogens elicited potent neutralizing antibodies. During my postdoctoral studies I joined a chemical biology laboratory at the Scripps Research Institute. In this stage I developed novel chemoproteomics methods for the identification of protein-small molecule interaction sites in complex proteomes. In March 2015, I joined the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) – Switzerland as a tenure track assistant professor. The focus of my research group is to develop computational tools for protein design with particular emphasis in applying these strategies to immunoengineering (e.g. vaccine and cancer immunotherapy). The activities in my laboratory focus on computational design methods development and experimental characterization of the designed proteins. Our laboratory has been awarded with 2 prestigious research grants from the European Research Council. Lastly, I have been awarded the prize for best teacher of Life sciences in 2019.
Rolf GruetterAwards:
1999 Young Investigator Award Plenary Lectureship
, International Society for Neurochemistry
2011 Fellow
, ESMRMB
2011 Teaching Award
, Section Sciences de la Vie, EPFL
