Jean-Philippe AnsermetJean-Philippe Ansermet was born March 1, 1957 in Lausanne (legal origin Vaumarcus, NE). He obtained a diploma as physics engineer of EPFL in 1980. He went on to get a PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where, from 1985 to 1987, he persued as post-doc with Prof. Slichter his research on catalysis by solid state NMR studies of molecules bound to the surface of catalysts. From 1987 to 1992 he worked at the materials research center of Ciba-Geigy, on polymers for microelectronics, composites, dielectrics and organic charge transfer complexes. In March 1992, as professor of experimental physics, he developed a laboratory on the theme of nanostructured materials and turned full professor in 1995. Since 1992, he teaches classical mechanics, first to future engineering students, since 2004 to physics majors. Since 2000, he teaches thermodynamics also, to the same group of students. He offers a graduate course in spintronics, and another on spin dynamics. His research activities concern the fabrication and properties of magnetic nanostructures produced by electrodeposition. His involvement since the early days of spintronics have allowed him to gain recognition for his work on giant magnetoresistance (CPP-GMR), magnetic relaxation of single nanostructures, and was among the leading groups demonstrating magnetization reversal by spin-polarized currents. Furthermore, his group uses nuclear magnetic resonance , on the one hand as means of investigation of surfaces and electrodes, on the other hand, as a local probe of the electronic properties of complex ferromagnetic oxides.
Aurelio BayAurelio Bay graduated in physics at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) in 1980 and got his PhD degree from the same institution in 1986 for a work on the determination of the axial form factor of the ? meson.
He then went to Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories (LBL), USA as a post doc for two years, where he worked on the TPC/2? Electromagnetic Calorimeter and the SSC/LHC detector. He then came back to Europe and was named Maître Assistant at University of Geneva till 1994, where he started working at the L3 experiment of LEP at CERN.
He was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Lausanne in 1994 and Full Professor in 1998, continuing working at LEP, LEP2 and LHCb at CERN , and starting a collaboration at BELLE experiment at KEK, Tsukuba (Japan).
At the University of Lausanne he was Director of the Institute of High Energy Physics, Deputy Director of the Physics Department and Deputy of the Dean of the Faculty of Sciences.
In 2003, following the merge of UNIL physics department into the EPFL School of Basic Sciences, he was appointed Full Professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Director of the EPFL Laboratory of High Energy Physics.
Olivier SchneiderAprès une thèse en physique des particules à l'Université de Lausanne, soutenue en 1989, Olivier Schneider rejoint le LBL, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (Californie), pour travailler sur l'expérience CDF au Tevatron de Fermilab (Illinois), d'abord au bénéfice d'une bourse de chercher débutant du Fonds National Suisse pour la Recherche Scientifique, puis comme post-doc au LBL. Il participe à la construction et à la mise en service du premier détecteur de vertex au silicium fontionnant avec succès auprès d'un collisionneur hadronique, détecteur qui a permis la découverte du sixième quark, appelé "top". Dès 1994, il revient en Europe et participe à l'expérience ALEPH au grand collisionneur électron-positon du CERN (Genève), comme boursier puis comme titulaire d'un poste de chercheur au CERN. Il se spécialise en physique des saveurs lourdes. En 1998, il est nommé professeur associé à l'Université de Lausanne, puis professeur extraordinaire à l'EPFL en 2003, et enfin professeur ordinaire à l'EPFL en 2010. Ayant participé depuis 1997 à la préparation de l'expérience LHCb au collisionneur LHC du CERN, entrée en fonction à fin 2009, il en analyse maintenant les données. Il contribue aussi depuis 2001 à l'exploitation des données enregistrées par l'expérience Belle au laboratoire KEK (Tsukuba, Japon). Ces deux expériences étudient principalement les désintégrations de hadrons contenant un quark b, ainsi que la violation de CP, c'est-à-dire le non-respect de la symétrie entre matière et antimatière.