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/ Matthias Lutolf is Full Professor at EPFL’s Institute of Bioengineering, with a cross appointment in the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering. Lutolf was trained as a Materials Engineer at ETH Zurich where he also carried out his PhD studies (with Jeffrey Hubbell) that were awarded with an ETH medal. He continued his research training as a Post-Doctoral Fellow in Stem Cell Biology (with Helen Blau) at Stanford University. He has served as the Director of the Institute of Bioengineering from 2014 to 2018. Lutolf is an internationally recognized leader in the fields of stem cell bioengineering and tissue engineering. His research program uniquely combines stem cell biology with engineering principles and quantitative thinking. His team, composed of engineers, chemists, physicists, cell and developmental biologists, strives to develop technologies that have true biological and medicinal function and applicability. Lutolf’s work has led to more than 110 peer-reviewed scientific publications, many of which published in highly reputed journals, more than 25 patents, and the commercialization of several products. Current research in the Lutolf lab is focused on the bioengineering of miniature tissues, termed organoids, that are generated from self-organizing stem cells.
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.
Philippe Renaud is Professor at the Microsystem Laboratory (LMIS4) at EPFL. He is also the scientific director of the EPFL Center of MicroNanoTechnology (CMI). His main research area is related to micronano technologies in biomedical applications (BioMEMS) with emphasis on cell-chips, nanofluidics and bioelectronics. Ph. Renaud is invloved in many scientifics papers in his research area. He received his diploma in physics from the University of Neuchâtel (1983) and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Lausanne (1988). He was postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Berkeley (1988-89) and then at the IBM Zürich Research Laboratory in Switzerland (1990-91). In 1992, he joined the Sensors and Actuators group of the Swiss Center for Electronics and Microtechnology (CSEM) at Neuchâtel, Switzerland. He was appointed assistant professor at EPFL in 1994 and full professor in 1997. In summer 1996, he was visiting professor at the Tohoku University, Japan. Ph. Renaud is active in several scientific committee (scientific journals, international conferences, scientific advisory boards of companies, PhD thesis committee). He is also co-founder of the Nanotech-Montreux conference. Ph. Renaud is committed to valorization of basic research through his involvement in several high-tech start-up companies.
