Johan AuwerxJohan 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.
Didier TronoAprès des études de médecine à l’Université de Genève et une formation clinique en pathologie, médecine interne et maladies infectieuses à Genève et au Massachusetts General Hospital de Boston, Didier Trono s’engage dans une carrière scientifique au Whitehead Institute du MIT. En 1990, il est recruté par le Salk Institute de San Diego pour lancer un centre de recherche sur le SIDA. Il rentre en Europe sept ans plus tard, avant de prendre en 2004 les rênes de la toute nouvelle faculté des Sciences de la Vie de l’EPFL, dont il orchestre le développement et qu’il dirige jusqu’en 2012. Il participe aujourd’hui activement à la coordination des efforts de la Suisse en vue de l’intégration des nouvelles technologies dans le domaine de la médecine de précision et de la santé personnalisée.
Jean-Philippe ThiranJean-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 VogelProfessional positions:
P. Vogel was born in Cully (Switzerland) Oct. 23, 1944. In 1969, he did his Ph.D Award under supervision of Prof. H. Prinzbach at the Institute of Organic Chemistry, University of Lausanne. After finishing his Ph.D in 1969, he did post-doctoral research at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA with Prof. Martin Saunders; research associate with Prof. J. A. Berson, K. A. Wiberg and P.v.R. Schleyer (Princeton Universtiy). From 1971 he worked as a Research chemist at Syntex S.A., in Mexico with Prof. P.Crabbé before he returned to the University of Lausanne in 1972. As of 1977 he became Professor of organic chemistry at the University of Lausanne. In 1991 he was Vice-Chairman of the Institute of organic Chemistry, University of Lausanne until 2001. Then he was Part-time grad.school teacher at the Universitites of Rouen and Caen from 1991 to 1993 and Part-time professor at Ecole Polytechnique de Palaiseau from 1993-2000. From 2000-2001 he was reviewer of the "Institut Universitaire de France" and as of 2001 Professor of organic chemistry at the EPFL.
Degrees and distincions
1969 Ph.D, University of Lausanne
1976 Swiss Chemical Society Award, Werner Medal
1973-now Member of the Swiss Chemical Society, of the American Chemical
Society and "Société Française de Chimie"
1984-1989 IOCD adviser
1988-1989 Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry at Ecole Normale
Supérieure, Paris
1989-2000 Member of the Swiss National Council of Research
1991-1992 Associate Professor of Organic Chemistry, University of Paris VI
1992 Pacific Coast Lecturer (USA)
1992-1993 Associate Professor at the Université de Montpellier, France
1993 Associate Professor, Université Paris Sud, Orsay
1993-1997 Swiss co-ordinator of the European COST D2 research program
1994 (spring) Associate Professor, ESPCI, Paris
1997 President of the european COST D2 management committee
1999 Coordinator of the european COSRD13
2001-now Member of the "Conseil Scientifique du Département des Sciences
Chimiques", CNRS
2002-2003 Novartis Lectureship
2004-2005 Boehringer INgelheim Distinguished Lecturer
