Stewart ColeProfessor Stewart Cole is an international authority in bacterial molecular-genetics and genomics. He has made outstanding contributions in several fields including: bacterial anaerobic electron transport; genome analysis of retroviruses and papillomaviruses; antibiotic resistance mechanisms; and the molecular microbiology of toxigenic clostridia. His studies on isoniazid and multidrug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, together with his pioneering work on the pathogenicity, evolution and genomics of the tubercle and leprosy bacilli, have made him an undisputed leader in the field of mycobacterial research. The findings of his research are of direct relevance to public health and disease-control in both the developing world and the industrialised nations. He has published over 250 scientific papers and review articles, and holds many patents.
Patrick AebischerPatrick Aebischer a achevé une formation en Médecine (1980) et en Neurosciences (1983) aux Universités de Genève et de Fribourg en Suisse.
De 1984 à 1992, Patrick Aebischer a travaillé à Brown University (USA) au sein du Département des Neurosciences et au Département des Biomatériaux et des Organes Artificiels en tant que Professeur assistant, puis Professeur associé.
En 1992, Patrick Aebischer a été nommé Professeur de la Division Autonome de Recherche Chirurgicale et du Centre de Thérapie Génique (DARC) au Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) à Lausanne.
En 1999, Le Conseil Fédéral a nommé Patrick Aebischer en tant que Président de l'Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Il a pris ses fonctions à la Présidence de lEPFL en mars 2000, position qu'il a occupée jusqu'au 31 décembre 2016.
Patrick Aebischer est membre de maintes sociétés professionnelles, tant en Europe quaux Etats-Unis.
Patrick Aebischer a fondé trois start-up de biotechnologies. Il siège au conseil d'administration de Lonza, de Logitech et de Nestlé. Il préside également l'advisory board du Novartis Venture Fund. Patrick Aebischer est membre du conseil de fondation du Festival de Jazz de Montreux, du Festival de Verbier et de la Fondation Jacobs.
Les recherches quil poursuit actuellement dans son laboratoire se concentrent sur le développement d'approches de thérapie cellulaire et de transfert génique pour le traitement des maladies neurodégénératives.
Marcello IencaDr. Marcello Ienca is a Principal Investigator at the College of Humanities at EPFL where he leads the ERA-NET funded Intelligent Systems Ethics research unit. He is also an affiliate member of the Health Ethics and Policy unit, Department of Health Sciences and Technology, and an ordinary member of the
Competence for Rehabilitation Engineering & Science
at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
Dr. Ienca's scholarship focuses on the ethical, legal, social and policy implications of emerging technologies. In particular, he investigates the broader implications of new (and often converging) sociotechnical trends such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), big data, digital epidemiology, robotics, assisted living, digital health, social media, dual use, and neurotechnology. He and his team use both theoretical and empirical methods to explore the requirements for responsible innovation, ethically-aligned technology design, user-centred design, and human-centered technology assessment.
Dr. Ienca is actively involved in science and technology policy within international organizations and professional societies. In particular, he is an appointed member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD) Steering Committee on Neurotechnology and the representative of the Swiss Delegation (appointed by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation, SERI). He has also been invited to serve as an expert advisor to the Council of Europe’s Ad Hoc Committee on Artificial Intelligence and the Bioethics Committee. Dr. Ienca has written reports for the OECD, the Council of Europe, and the European Parliament's Panel for the Future of Science and Technology. He is a Member of the Board of Directors of the Italian Neuroethics Society (SINe), a former Board Member and current member of the Nominating Committee of the International Neuroethics Society (INS). Ienca is a member of the Editorial Board of several academic journals such as Neuroethics, Bioethica Forum, Frontiers in Neuroergonomics and Frontiers in Genetics.
Ienca has received several awards for social responsibility in science and technology such as the Vontobel Award for Ageing Research (Switzerland), the Prize Pato de Carvalho (Portugal), the Sonia Lupien Award (Canada), the Paul Schotsmans Prize from the European Association of Centres of Medical Ethics (EACME) and the Data Privacy Plaque of Honour, awarded by the Italian Data Protection Authority. He has authored one monograph, several edited volumes, 60 scientific articles in peer-review journals, several book chapters and is a frequent contributor to Scientific American. His research was featured in academic journals such as
Neuron
,
Nature Biotechnology
,
Nature Machine Intelligence
,
Nature Medicine
and media outlets such as
Nature
,
The New Yorker
,
The Guardian
,
The Times
,
Die Welt
,
The Independent
, the
Financial Times
and others.
Furthermore, Dr. Ienca strongly supports open science, outreach and public engagement. He is committed to a holistic view of research that is not restricted to academia alone but involves an open approach to science communication, outreach and public engagement. Among other things, he is an open-science and open-data enthusiast and a human rights activist. He believes that there can be no ethical technological innovation without global justice.
