Esther AmstadEsther Amstad studied material science at ETH in Zurich. She also carried out her PhD thesis at the same University under the supervision of Prof. Marcus Textor; for her thesis, she worked on the surface modification and steric stabilization of oxide nanoparticles. As a postdoctoral fellow, she joined the experimental condensed soft matter group of David A. Weitz at Harvard University where she used droplet based microfluidics to assemble different types of functional micro- and nanomaterials. In addition, she developped new microfluidic devices that enable the production of very small, airborne drops as well as devices that produce highly monodisperse emulsion drops at a very high throughput. In June 2014, Esther joined the material science department (IMX) of EPFL where she is leading the Soft Materials Laboratory (SMAL).
Jean-Jacques MeisterCitoyen suisse, Jean-Jacques Meister est né en 1950. Il est titulaire d'un diplôme d'ingénieur en électronique et d'un diplôme d'ingénieur physicien, obtenu en 1979 à l'Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Il poursuit sa formation à l'Institut des techniques biomédicales de l'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Zurich et obtient son doctorat ès sciences en 1983. De 1984 à 1990, il travaille dans différents domaines de la physique biomédicale. Ses principales réalisations portent sur le développement de méthodes non-invasives utiles à la prévention et au diagnostic des maladies cardio-vasculaires: caractérisation des propriétés biomécaniques des artères, hémodynamique cardio-vasculaire, échographie Doppler ultrasonore. En 1990, il est nommé professeur de physique expérimentale à l'EPFL où il dirige le Laboratoire de génie médical jusqu'en 2001, puis le laboratoire de biophysique cellulaire. Ses activités de recherche concernent principalement la biophysique cellulaire: dynamique du cytosquelette, motilité & adhésion cellulaire et dynamique du calcium dans les muscles lisses. Lors d'un congé sabbatique en 2000, il complète sa formation en biologie moléculaire et cellulaire au célèbre Marine Biological Laboratory de Woods Hole, dans le Massachusetts, USA. Il enseigne la physique générale, la mécanique générale, le génie biomédical et la biophysique aux étudiants de diverses sections de l'EPFL. Il est auteur ou coauteur de plus de 230 publications scientifiques et chapitres de livres et titulaire de 8 brevets internationaux
Julian Charles ShillcockJulian received his PhD at Simon Fraser University in Canada for work on Monte Carlo simulations of liquid crystal phase transitions and the elastic properties of fluid and polymerized membranes. He was a Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, Germany for five years applying coarse-grained simulation techniques - principally Dissipative Particle Dynamics (DPD) and Brownian Dynamics - to equilibrium and dynamic properties of fluid lipid membranes. A major target of this research was to reveal the molecular rearrangements that occur during vesicle fusion. During this time, he developed a commercially-available, parallel DPD code that is being used by several universities. He was an Associate Professor at MEMPHYS in the Department of Physics and Chemistry, University of Southern Denmark. He has also worked in industry, designing and writing software for communication satellite simulations (British Aerospace, 1986-1990), and fluid simulation software (Accelrys, Inc., 1998-1999). He joined the Blue Brain Project in 2011, and uses mesoscale simulation techniques, together with theoretical analysis and collaborations with experimentalists, to study the dynamics of cellular processes. Current projects include simulating the formation of the post-synaptic density in dendritic spines and developing theoretical models of the supramolecular organisation of synapses. He also teaches Master's and PhD courses in computational cell biology and biophysics. He wrote and maintains an open source dissipative particle dynamics simulation code: https://github.com/Osprey-DPD/osprey-dpd Orcid: orcid.org/0000-0002-7885-735X Gerardo TurcattiSenior scientific level (R&D) with extensive experience in the management of multidisciplinary technological projects. Prof. Gerardo Turcatti, directs the academic technological platform, Biomolecular Screening Facility (BSF) at the EPFL he created in 2006. In the framework of the NCCR-Chemical Biology, he is project leader of the program ACCESS (An Academic Chemical Screening Platform for Switzerland). Previously he co-founded and acted as CTO of Manteia S.A., a Swiss-based company that developed high throughput DNA sequencing technologies currently owned by Illumina and used in the ‘Next Generation Sequencing’ instruments. Prior to this experience, Prof. Turcatti had a long multidisciplinary career in R&D divisions of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical companies with extensive expertise in several Chemical Biology-related disciplines such as Drug Screening, Chemical Biology, Bio-analytical Chemistry, DNA and Protein Chemistry. Prof. Turcatti earned his Master in Chemical Engineering at the University of Geneva and his PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry from the EPFL where he received the award for the best doctoral thesis of the year.
