Daniel ThalmannProf. Daniel Thalmann is Honorary Professor at EPFL and Director of Research development at MIRALab Sarl. He has been Visiting Professor at The Institute for Media Innovation (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) from 2009 to 2017. He is a pioneer in research on Virtual Humans. His current research interests include Real-time Virtual Humans in Virtual Reality, crowd simulation, and 3D Interaction. Daniel Thalmann has been the Founder of The Virtual Reality Lab (VRlab) at EPFL, Switzerland, Professor at The University of Montreal and Visiting Professor/ Researcher at CERN, University of Nebraska, University of Tokyo, and National University of Singapore. Until October 2010, he was the President of the Swiss Association of Research in Information Technology and one Director of the European Research Consortium in Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM). He is coeditor-in-chief of the Journal of Computer Animation and Virtual Worlds, and member of the editorial board of 6 other journals. Daniel Thalmann was member of numerous Program Committees, Program Chair and CoChair of several conferences including IEEE VR, ACM VRST, and ACM VRCAI. Daniel Thalmann has published more than 500 papers in Graphics, Animation, and Virtual Reality. He is coeditor of 30 books, and coauthor of several books including 'Crowd Simulation' (second edition 2012) and 'Stepping Into Virtual Reality' (2007), published by Springer. He received his PhD in Computer Science in 1977 from the University of Geneva and an Honorary Doctorate (Honoris Causa) from University Paul- Sabatier in Toulouse, France, in 2003. He also received the Eurographics Distinguished Career Award in 2010 and the 2012 Canadian Human Computer Communications Society Achievement Award. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Thalmann 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.
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.
Marilyne AndersenMarilyne Andersen est professeure ordinaire en technologies durables de la construction et dirige le Laboratoire Performance Intégrée au Design (LIPID) qu'elle a fondé en automne 2010. Elle a été Doyenne de la Faculté de l'Environnement Naturel, Architectural et Construit (ENAC) de l'EPFL de 2013 à 2018 et est la Directrice Académique du Smart Living Lab à Fribourg. Elle co-dirige également le Student Kreativity and Innovation Laboratory (SKIL) à l'ENAC.Avant de rejoindre l'EPFL, elle était professeure assistante puis associée (tenure-track) dans le Building Technology Group du MIT, au sein du Département d'Architecture, où elle a fondé et dirigé le MIT Daylighting Lab depuis 2004. Elle a aussi été professeure invitée à la Singapore University of Technology and Design en 2019. Marilyne Andersen détient un Master ès sciences en physique et s'est spécialisée dans l'éclairage naturel durant sa thèse dans la physique du bâtiment à l'EPFL au Laboratoire d'énergie solaire et de physique du bâtiment (LESO) ainsi qu'en tant que chercheuse invitée au Building Technologies Department du Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory en Californie. Ses recherches se situent à l'interface entre sciences, ingénierie et architecture avec une attention spécifique sur l'impact de la lumière naturelle sur les occupants d'un bâtiment. Avec un focus sur les questions de confort, de perception et de santé et leurs implications énergétiques, ces efforts de recherche visent à une intégration plus profonde de la performance lumineuse et du confort intérieur dans le processus de conception, grâce à de nouvelles synergies avec d'autres domaines scientifiques, comme la chronobiologie et les neurosciences ainsi que la psychophysique ou l'informatique et l'imagerie digitale. Elle s'appuie sur ces recherches pour les étendre à la pratique architecturale à travers la startup OCULIGHT dynamics qu'elle a co-fondée, et qui offre des services spécialisés en éclairage naturel avec un accent particulier sur les effets psycho-physiologiques de la lumière naturelle sur les occupants d'un bâtiment. Elle est l'auteure de plus de 200 articles référés publiés dans des revues scientifiques et lors de conférences internationales, ainsi que la lauréate de plusieurs bourses et prix dont: le Daylight Award for Research (2016), onze prix et distinctions pour ses publications (2009, 2011, 2012, 2015, 2018, 2019, 2021) dont le Taylor Technical Talent Award 2009 décerné par la Illuminating Engineering Society, le 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award (2009), le Mitsui Career Development Professorship au MIT (2008) et le prix EPFL de la Fondation Chorafas en durabilité attribué pour sa thèse (2005). Ses travaux de recherche ou d'enseignement ont été soutenus par des organisations professionnelles, institutionnelles et industrielles tels que les Fonds National pour la Recherche Scientifique (en Suisse et aux USA), la fondation Velux, le programme Européen Horizon 2020, la Boston Society of Architects, la MIT Energy Initiative et InnoSuisse. Elle a été la directrice et responsable académique de l'équipe suisse et son projet NeighborHub, qui a gagné la compétition U.S. Solar Decathlon 2017 avec 8 podiums sur 10 épreuves. Elle est membre du Conseil de la Fondation LafargeHolcim pour la construction durable et dirige son Comité Académique. Elle est également membre du conseil éditorial de la revue scientifique Building and Environment chez Elsevier ainsi que des revues LEUKOS (de la Illuminating Engineering Society) et Buildings and Cities chez Taylor et Francis. Elle est Experte pour le Conseil d'Innovation InnoSuisse ainsi que membre fondatrice et membre du Conseil de la Fondation Culture du Bâti (CUB). Elle est aussi membre fondatrice de la Daylight Academy et membre active de plusieurs comités de l'Illuminating Engineering Society (IES) et de la Commission Internationale de l'Eclairage (CIE).
Alexandre Massoud AlahiAlexandre Alahi is currently an Assistant Professor at EPFL. He spent five years at Stanford University as a Post-doc and Research Scientist after obtaining his Ph.D. from EPFL. His research enables machines to perceive the world and make decisions in the context of transportation problems and smart environments. He has worked on the theoretical challenges and practical applications of socially-aware Artificial Intelligence, i.e., systems equipped with perception and social intelligence. He was awarded the Swiss NSF early and advanced researcher grants for his work on predicting human social behavior. He won the CVPR Open Source Award (2012) for his work on Retina-inspired image descriptors, and the ICDSC Challenge Prize (2009) for his sparsity-driven algorithm that has tracked more than 100 million pedestrians to date. His research has been covered internationally by BBC, abc, PBS, Euronews, Wall street journal, and other national news outlets around the world. Alexandre has also co-founded multiple startups such as Visiosafe, and won several startup competitions. He was elected as one of the Top 20 Swiss Venture leaders in 2010.
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.
Jacques FellayJacques Fellay is a medical scientist with expertise in infectious diseases and human genomics. He obtained his MD from the University of Lausanne in 2002 and his PhD from University of Utrecht. After a clinical training in infectious diseases in Switzerland and a 4-years postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University, he joined the EPFL in April 2011 with an SNF Professorship.
On top of his EPFL affiliation, Jacques is also Head of Precision Medicine at the University Hospital (CHUV) in Lausanne, Group Leader at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, and Co-director of the Health2030 Genome Center at Campus Biotech in Geneva.
