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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Paul Joseph DysonPaul Dyson rejoignit l’EPFL en 2002 à la tête du Laboratoire de chimie organométallique et médicinale de l’Institut des sciences et ingénierie chimiques, dont il en assuma ensuite la direction entre 2008 et 2016.
Le prof. Dyson a été récompensé par de nombreux prix dont le Prix Werner de la Société Suisse de Chimie en 2004, le Prix pour les réalisations exceptionnelles en chimie bio organométallique en 2010, la Médaille du Centenaire de la naissance de Luigi Sacconi (2011) de la Société Italienne de Chimie, le Prix de Chimie bio-inorganique de la Royal Society of Chemistry en 2015, le Prix européen pour une chimie durable de la Société Européenne de Chimie en 2018 et le Prix pour la chimie verte de la Royal Society of Chemistry en 2020.
Le prof. Dyson est également mentionné dans la liste établie par Clarivate des chercheurs les plus cités (Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher), avec un H-index >110 (Web of Science et Google Scholar). Paul Dyson a été élu membre de la Royal Société de Chimie en 2010, membre de l’Académie Européenne des Sciences en 2019 et membre à vie de l’Association Américaine pour l’Avancement de la Science en 2020. Au cours des dernières années il s’est vu décerner le titre de Professeurs Hôte par l’Université de Bourgogne, l’Université de Pierre et Marie Curie, l’Université de Vienne, l’Université de Rome Tor Vergara, l'Ecole Nationale Supérieure de chimie de Paris (Chimie ParisTech) et par l’Université de Shangai Jiao Tong.
De 2016 à 2021 il était membre du conseil de la recherche de la division de mathématique, sciences naturelles et de l’ingénieur du Fonds National Suisse. En 2021, il a été nommé doyen de la Faculté des Sciences de Base.
John McKinneyProfessor John McKinney received his Ph.D. from The Rockefeller University (New York, NY) in 1994 for studies on cell cycle regulation in
Saccharomyces cerevisiae
in the laboratory of Fred Cross. From 1995 to 1998, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of William Jacobs at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine (Bronx, NY), where he studied mechanisms of persistence in
Mycobacterium tuberculosis
. In 1999, he returned to Rockefeller University to establish his own laboratory as an Assistant (1999-2004) and then Associate (2004-2007) Professor. In July 2007, the lab relocated to the Global Health Institute in the School of Life Sciences at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland, where McKinney is Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Microbiology and Microsystems (LMIC). Our research focuses on understanding the mechanistic basis of bacterial persistence in the context of host immunity and antimicrobial therapy, using
M. tuberculosis
as a "model" system.
Hilal Lashuel2012-2013 Visiting Professor, Standford University. Stanford School of Medicine
2011- Associate Professor of Life Sciences-Brain Mind Institute-EPFL
Dir. Laboratory of Chemical Biology of Neurodegeneration
2005-2011 Assistant Professor of Life Sciences-Brain Mind Institute-EPFL
Dir. Laboratory of Molecular Neurobiology and Neuroproteomics
2005-2008 Director- EPFL Proteomic Core Facility
2002-2004 Instructor of Neurology- Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's
Hospital
2001-2002 Sabbatical Fellow- Laboratory for Drug Discovery in Neurodegeneration
Harvard Medical School,
2001-2002 Post-doctoral Fellow- Center for Neurologic Diseases
Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women's Hospital
Advisor- Prof. Peter T. Lansbury
2000-2001 Research Scientist, The Picower Institute for Medical Research, Great Neck
New York
1994-2000 PhD Student; Texas A&M University and the Scripps Research Institute
Advisor- Prof. Jeffery W. Kelly
1990-1994 B.S. City University of New York, Brooklyn College
Dr. Hilal A. Lashuel received his B.Sc. degree in chemistry from the City University of New York in 1994 and completed his doctoral studies at Texas A&M University and the Scripps Research Institute in 2000. After obtaining his doctoral degree, he became a research fellow at the Picower Institute for Medical Research in Long Island New York. In 2001, he moved to Harvard Medical School and the Brigham and Women's Hospital as a research fellow in the Center for Neurologic Diseases and was later promoted to an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School. During his tenure (2001-2004) at Harvard Medical School his work focused on understanding the mechanisms of protein misfolding and fibrillogenesis and the role of these processes in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease. In 2005 Dr. Lashuel moved Switzerland to join the Brain Mind Institute at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne as a tenure-track assistant professor in neurosciences. Currently, Dr. Lashuel is an associate professor of life sciences and the director of the laboratory of molecular and chemical biology of neurodegeneration. (http://lashuel-lab.epfl.ch/).
Research efforts in the Lashuels laboratory focus on understanding the molecular mechanisms of neurodegeneration and developing novel strategies to diagnose and treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease. Research in the Lashuel lab is funded by several international funding agencies and foundations, including the Swiss National Science Foundation, European FP7 program (Marie Curie and ERC grants), Human Science Frontiers, Strauss Foundation, Cure the Huntingtons disease foundation and Michael J Fox foundation and is supported by collaborations with pharmaceutical and biotech companies (http://lashuel-lab.epfl.ch/page-50538-en.html), Nestle, Merck-Serono, AC Immune and Johnson and Johnson.
Dr. Lashuels research has resulted in the characterization of novel quaternary structure intermediates on the amyloid pathway, identification of potential therapeutic targets, and new hypotheses concerning the mechanisms of pathogenesis in Alzheimers disease, Parkinsons disease and related disorders. Dr. Lashuel scientific contribution to this field includes i) more than100 publications in major peer reviewed journals including Nature journals, Cell, PNAS, JBC, J. Neuroscience JACS, and Angewandtie Chemie; ii) three patents on novel strategies for preventing protein aggregation and treating autoimmune and inflammatory diseases; iii) more than 150 invited lectures since 2002 and more than 5500 citations (7800 citation-Google Scholar) since 1996. Dr. Lashuel has received several pre-doctoral and post-doctoral awards and fellowships and was the recipient of two prestigious awards given to young investigators; Human Science Frontiers young investigator research award and the European Research Council (ERC) starting independent researcher grant and the ERC proof of concept award (2013) These awards provide more than $2.5 Million to Dr. Lashuel to translate some of his ideas and projects into novel strategies for diagnosing and treating neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimers and Parkinsons disease. Dr. Lashuel has chaired and co-organized several international conferences and serves as an academic editor for PLoS ONE, an associate editor for frontiers of molecular neuroscience, member of the Editorial advisory board of ChemBioChem and ad hoc reviewer for several international scientific journals and funding agencies. 