Johan Auwerx is Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale in Lausanne, Switzerland, where he occupies the Nestle Chair in Energy Metabolism. Dr. Auwerx has been using molecular physiology and systems genetics to understand metabolism in health, aging and disease. Much of his work focused on understanding how diet, exercise and hormones control metabolism through changing the expression of genes by altering the activity of transcription factors and their associated cofactors. His work was instrumental for the development of agonists of nuclear receptors - a particular class of transcription factors - into drugs, which now are used to treat high blood lipid levels, fatty liver, and type 2 diabetes. Dr. Auwerx was amongst the first to recognize that transcriptional cofactors, which fine-tune the activity of transcription factors, act as energy sensors/effectors that influence metabolic homeostasis. His research validated these cofactors as novel targets to treat metabolic diseases, and spurred the clinical use of natural compounds, such as resveratrol, as modulators of these cofactor pathways.
Johan Auwerx was elected as a member of EMBO in 2003 and is the recipient of a dozen of international scientific prizes, including the Danone International Nutrition Award, the Oskar Minkowski Prize, and the Morgagni Gold Medal. His work is highly cited by his peers with a h-factor of over 100. He is an editorial board member of several journals, including Cell Metabolism, Molecular Systems Biology, The EMBO Journal, Journal of Cell Biology, Cell, and Science. Dr. Auwerx co-founded a handful of biotech companies, including Carex, PhytoDia, and most recently Mitobridge, and has served on several scientific advisory boards.
Dr. Auwerx received both his MD and PhD in Molecular Endocrinology at the Katholieke Universiteit in Leuven, Belgium. He was a post-doctoral research fellow in the Departments of Medicine and Genetics of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Georges Wagnières a obtenu son diplôme (MSc) en physique à l'Université de Lausanne, Suisse, en 1986. Il a reçu son doctorat ès science (PhD) en physique (Optique Biomédicale) de l'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) en 1992, et a effectué un travail de postdoctorat dans les "Wellman Laboratories of Photomedicine" (Harvard Medical School) situés à Boston, MA, USA, en 1993 et 1994. Il a aussi obtenu, en 2001, un "Master in management of technology" délivré par l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales (HEC) de l'Université de Lausanne et l'EPFL. Depuis 1994, il gère un groupe de recherche de l'EPFL actif dans les domaines suivants: - Caractérisation et détection de lésions cancéreuses par spectroscopie et imagerie de fluorescence ainsi que par imagerie à fort grossissement. - Traitement du cancer ainsi que d'autres pathologies associées à des désordres immunologiques (maladie de Crohn, Colite ulcéreuse) ou vasculaires par thérapie photodynamique (PDT). - Développement préclinique et clinique de photosensibilisateurs, de marqueurs fluorescents et d'instruments optiques pour le photodiagnostic. - Traitement de diverses pathologies, y compris les maladies neuro-dégénératives (Parkinson, Alzheimer), par photobiomodulation. - Monitorage de la dose optique pour la PDT basée sur l'imagerie de fluorescence de photosensibilisateurs. - Induction de l'extravasation d'agent chimiothérapeutiques par PDT. - Mesure in vivo de la concentration d'oxygène dans des tissus biologiques par spectroscopie et imagerie optiques résolues en temps. - Monitorage d'un traitement au laser de la rétine par imagerie de reflectance. - Développement de distributeurs de lumière pour des applications biomédicales. - Dosimétrie de lumière / Radiométrie. - Spectroscopie et imagerie en optique biomédicale. Georges Wagnières est aussi co-fondateur et a présidé une société "spin-off" de l'EPFL: - Medlight SA, fondée en 1997, qui développe, produit et commercialise des distributeurs de lumière pour la thérapie photodynamique. Georges Wagnières est l'auteur et co-auteur de plus de 235 articles scientifiques dont 150 ont été publiés dans des revues internationales ayant un comité de relecture (review board). De plus, il est inventeur de 18 brevets. Finalement, il supervise ou a supervisé 12 doctorants et enseigne actuellement à l'EPFL l'optique biomédicale et la photomédecine au niveaux "master". Ces cours sont aussi donnés à l'Ecole doctorale (EDCH, EDSV) de l'EPFL. Finalement, il donne le cours intitulé "Physique Générale I" aux biologistes de première année inscrits à l'Ecole de Biologie de l'Université de Lausanne. PUBLICATIONS PRINCIPALES: SVP visiter: https://www.epfl.ch/labs/lifmet/wagnieres/publications/ Jean-Philippe Thiran was born in Namur, Belgium, in August 1970. He received the Electrical Engineering degree and the PhD degree from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL), Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium, in 1993 and 1997, respectively. From 1993 to 1997, he was the co-ordinator of the medical image analysis group of the Communications and Remote Sensing Laboratory at UCL, mainly working on medical image analysis. Dr Jean-Philippe Thiran joined the Signal Processing Institute (ITS) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, in February 1998 as a senior lecturer. He was promoted to Assistant Professor in 2004, to Associate Professor in 2011 and is now a Full Professor since 2020. He also holds a 20% position at the Department of Radiology of the University of Lausanne (UNIL) and of the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) as Associate Professor ad personam. Dr Thiran's current scientific interests include
Computational medical imaging: acquisition, reconstruction and analysis of imaging data, with emphasis on regularized linear inverse problems (compressed sensing, convex optimization). Applications to medical imaging: diffusion MRI, ultrasound imaging, inverse planning in radiotherapy, etc.Computer vision & machine learning: image and video analysis, with application to facial expression recognition, eye tracking, lip reading, industrial inspection, medical image analysis, etc.
Pierre J. Magistretti is an internationally-recognized neuroscientist who has made significant contributions in the field of brain energy metabolism. His group has discovered some of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie the coupling between neuronal activity and energy consumption by the brain.
This work has considerable ramifications for the understanding of the origin of the signals detected with the current functional brain imaging techniques used in neurological and psychiatric research (see for example Magistretti et al, Science, 283: 496 497, 1999). He is the author of over 100 articles published in peer-reviewed journals.
He has given over 80 invited lectures at international meetings or at universities in Europe and North America, including the 2000 Talairach Lecture at the Functional Mapping of the Human Brain Conference. In November 2000 he has been a Mc Donnel Visiting Scholar at Washington University School of Medicine.
Pierre J. Magistretti is the President-Elect (2002 2004) of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) which has a membership of over 15000 European neuroscientists. He has been first president of the Swiss Society for Neuroscience (1997-1999) and the first Chairman of the Department of Neurosciences of the University of Lausanne (1996 1998).
Pierre J. Magistretti is Professor of Physiology (since 1988) at the University of Lausanne Medical School. He has been Vice-Dean of the University of Lausanne Medical School from 1996 to 2000. Pierre Magistretti, is Director of the Brain Mind Institute at EPFL and Director of the Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience of the University of Lausanne and CHUV. He is also Director of the NCCR SYNAPSY "the synaptic bases of mental diseases".
POSITIONS AND HONORS
MAIN POSITION HELD
1988-2004 Professor of Physiology, University of Lausanne Medical School
1996-2000 Vice-Dean for Preclinical Departments, University of Lausanne Medical School
2001-2004 Chairman, Department of Physiology, University of Lausanne Medical School
2004-present Professor and Director, Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry, University of Lausanne Medical School and Hospitals (UNIL-CHUV) (Joint appointment with EPFL)
2005-2008 Professor and Co-Director, Brain Mind Institute, Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne (Joint appointment with UNIL-CHUV)
2007-present Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of Centre dImagerie Biomédicale (CIBM), an Imaging Consortium of the Universities, University Hospitals of Lausanne and Geneva and of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
2008-present Professor and Director, Brain Mind Institute, Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne Joint appointment with UNIL-CHUV)
2010-present Director, National Center for Competence in Research (NCCR)
The synaptic bases of mental diseases of the Swiss National Science Foundation
2010-present Secretary General, International Brain Research Organization (IBRO)
MAIN HONORS AND AWARDS
1997 Recipient of the Theodore-Ott Prize of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences
2001 Elected Member of Academia Europaea
2001 Elected Member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, ad personam
2002 Recipient of the Emil Kraepelin Guest Professorship, Max Planck Institute für Psychiatry, Münich
2006 Elected Professor at Collège de France, Paris, International Chair 2007-2008
2009 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship, Canadian Psychological Association
2011 Camillo Golgi Medal Award, Golgi Fondation
2011 Elected Member of the American College of NeuroPsychopharmacology (ACNP)
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.
