Rudolf HoviusExpertise
•Protein structure, expression & purification•Molecular interaction & receptor activation•Fluorescence imaging & spectroscopySignalling & sensing
Mission
=> Teaching: Lecture courses, tutorials and practicals in biochemistry, biophysical chemistry of membranes and signalling processes. Participating to the Commission d'Enseignement and Commission de l'Ecole Doctorale of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.=> Research interests: Protein function and structure, Membrane protein (especially recepto
Wendy Lee QueenTeaching & PhD PhD Students Pratap Narayan Soni, Pattaraphon Rodlamul, Matthieu Meoli, Olivier Thomas Smith, Sanjay Venkatachalam, Anne Faustine Sido Belin, Christopher William Gardner, Lorenzo Meneghin Past EPFL PhD Students Mehrdad Asgari, Daniel Teav Sun, Ilia Kochetygov, Vikram Vinayak Karve, Anita Justin, Till Marian Schertenleib, Jocelyn Richard Roth, Timo Markus Oskar Felder Courses Chemical engineering practice ChE-309 This course provides the students with practical experience wit
Mathilde Stéphanie WilleminExpertise
Dynamic and enthusiastic biochemist with a phD in microbiology. Happy to help you realize your project from experimental design to data analysis.
Hubert GiraultEducation: 1979 - Engineering diploma from Grenoble Institute of Technology. FRANCE. 1982 - PhD- Department of Chemistry, University of Southampton. Thesis entitled : Interfacial studies using drop image processing techniques. Positions : 1982 - 1984 SERC Research Fellow. University of Southampton. 1984 - 1985 CNRS Research Fellow. University of Southampton. 1985 - 1992 Lecturer in Physical Chemistry, University of Edinburgh. 1992 - Professor of Physical Chemistry, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. 2011 - 2014 Dean of Bachelor and Master studies Hubert Girault is the author of 2 textbooks, the co-author of about 600 scientific publications with more than 20'000 citations and the co-inventor of more than 15 patents. During his academic career, he has supervised 70 PhD students. 30 alumni of his laboratory are now Professors. Honours: Faraday medal 2006, Royal Society of Chemistry, Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry 2007, Reilley Award 2015. Fellow of the Electrochemical Society (USA), Shikata International medal, Polarography Society of Japan. Associate editor of Chemical Science
Elisa OricchioExpertise
Cancer geneticsMouse modelsTherapyStem cellsLymphoma
Teaching & PhD PhD Students Vamsi Krishna Polavarapu, Asli Ece Kasapoglu, Konstantina Georgakopoulou, Eleni Balli Past EPFL PhD Students Maria Christine Donaldson, Elena Battistello, Daniel Pereira Duarte, Frédérica Schyrr, Ruxandra-Andreea Lambuta, Aaron Simone Petruzzella, Jixing Zhong, Justine Epiney Courses Cancer biology I BIO-471 The course covers in detail molecular mechanisms of cancer development with emphasis on cell
Li TangEducation and Training Postdoctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013 - 2016 Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007 - 2012 B.S., Peking University, 2003-2007
Giovanna AmbrosiniCurrent Position Senior Scientist, School of Life Sciences, Bioinformatics Competence Center, école Polythechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Lausanne.Senior bioinformatician and software engineer with proven experience working in higher education institutions. Solid experience in scientific computing and web design. Proficient in physics and computational genomics, with a focus on high-throughput genomic sequencing data analysis (ChIP-seq, ATAC-seq, RNA-seq, scRNA-seq, and exome sequencing) and other types of
Sandra Eloise KjeldsenPositions
2008- : Laborantine (Laboratoire du Pr D. Trono), Laboratoire de virologie et génétique, EPFL, Suisse.
2004-2008: Laborantine (Laboratoire du Pr A. Trumpp), ISREC, Suisse.
2004: Assistante de recherche (Laboratoire du Pr G. Corradin), Institut de Biochimie, Université de Lausanne, Suisse.
Éducation
1999 - 2004:
Diplôme en Biologie (spécialités : Immunologie, Biochimie et Pharmacologie)
Université de Lausanne, Suisse.
Juin 1999:
Baccalauréat Scientifique, France. Maria Josefina Marcaida LopezExpertise
Protein crystallographyProtein-nucleic acid complexesKinase-small molecule interactions
FELLOWSHIPS & AWARDS • Marie Heim-Vögtlin Postdoctoral Fellowship SNSF March 2012-August 2014• CRUS Dual career couples, September 2011 & January 2012• Human Frontiers Short Term Fellowship, September- December 2009 • Juan de la Cierva Postdoctoral Fellowship 2009-2011• EMBO Long term Fellowship 2007-2008• Wellcome Trust Prize Studentship 2001-2005• Final Year Project Award, Imperial College, 2001 Education
Henry MarkramHenry Markram started a dual scientific and medical career at the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. His scientific work in the 80s revealed the polymodal receptive fields of pontomedullary reticular formation neurons in vivo and how acetylcholine re-organized these sensory maps.
He moved to Israel in 1988 and obtained his PhD at the Weizmann Institute where he discovered a link between acetylcholine and memory mechanisms by being the first to show that acetylcholine modulates the NMDA receptor in vitro studies, and thereby gates which synapses can undergo synaptic plasticity. He was also the first to characterize the electrical and anatomical properties of the cholinergic neurons in the medial septum diagonal band.
He carried out a first postdoctoral study as a Fulbright Scholar at the NIH, on the biophysics of ion channels on synaptic vesicles using sub-fractionation methods to isolate synaptic vesicles and patch-clamp recordings to characterize the ion channels. He carried out a second postdoctoral study at the Max Planck Institute, as a Minerva Fellow, where he discovered that individual action potentials propagating back into dendrites also cause pulsed influx of Ca2 into the dendrites and found that sub-threshold activity could also activated a low threshold Ca2 channel. He developed a model to show how different types of electrical activities can divert Ca2 to activate different intracellular targets depending on the speed of Ca2 influx an insight that helps explain how Ca2 acts as a universal second messenger. His most well known discovery is that of the millisecond watershed to judge the relevance of communication between neurons marked by the back-propagating action potential. This phenomenon is now called Spike Timing Dependent Plasticity (STDP), which many laboratories around the world have subsequently found in multiple brain regions and many theoreticians have incorporated as a learning rule. At the Max-Planck he also started exploring the micro-anatomical and physiological principles of the different neurons of the neocortex and of the mono-synaptic connections that they form - the first step towards a systematic reverse engineering of the neocortical microcircuitry to derive the blue prints of the cortical column in a manner that would allow computer model reconstruction.
He received a tenure track position at the Weizmann Institute where he continued the reverse engineering studies and also discovered a number of core principles of the structural and functional organization such as differential signaling onto different neurons, models of dynamic synapses with Misha Tsodyks, the computational functions of dynamic synapses, and how GABAergic neurons map onto interneurons and pyramidal neurons. A major contribution during this period was his discovery of Redistribution of Synaptic Efficacy (RSE), where he showed that co-activation of neurons does not only alter synaptic strength, but also the dynamics of transmission. At the Weizmann, he also found the tabula rasa principle which governs the random structural connectivity between pyramidal neurons and a non-random functional connectivity due to target selection. Markram also developed a novel computation framework with Wolfgang Maass to account for the impact of multiple time constants in neurons and synapses on information processing called liquid computing or high entropy computing.
In 2002, he was appointed Full professor at the EPFL where he founded and directed the Brain Mind Institute. During this time Markram continued his reverse engineering approaches and developed a series of new technologies to allow large-scale multi-neuron patch-clamp studies. Markrams lab discovered a novel microcircuit plasticity phenomenon where connections are formed and eliminated in a Darwinian manner as apposed to where synapses are strengthening or weakened as found for LTP. This was the first demonstration that neural circuits are constantly being re-wired and excitation can boost the rate of re-wiring.
At the EPFL he also completed the much of the reverse engineering studies on the neocortical microcircuitry, revealing deeper insight into the circuit design and built databases of the blue-print of the cortical column. In 2005 he used these databases to launched the Blue Brain Project. The BBP used IBMs most advanced supercomputers to reconstruct a detailed computer model of the neocortical column composed of 10000 neurons, more than 340 different types of neurons distributed according to a layer-based recipe of composition and interconnected with 30 million synapses (6 different types) according to synaptic mapping recipes. The Blue Brain team built dozens of applications that now allow automated reconstruction, simulation, visualization, analysis and calibration of detailed microcircuits. This Proof of Concept completed, Markrams lab has now set the agenda towards whole brain and molecular modeling.
With an in depth understanding of the neocortical microcircuit, Markram set a path to determine how the neocortex changes in Autism. He found hyper-reactivity due to hyper-connectivity in the circuitry and hyper-plasticity due to hyper-NMDA expression. Similar findings in the Amygdala together with behavioral evidence that the animal model of autism expressed hyper-fear led to the novel theory of Autism called the Intense World Syndrome proposed by Henry and Kamila Markram. The Intense World Syndrome claims that the brain of an Autist is hyper-sensitive and hyper-plastic which renders the world painfully intense and the brain overly autonomous. The theory is acquiring rapid recognition and many new studies have extended the findings to other brain regions and to other models of autism.
Markram aims to eventually build detailed computer models of brains of mammals to pioneer simulation-based research in the neuroscience which could serve to aggregate, integrate, unify and validate our knowledge of the brain and to use such a facility as a new tool to explore the emergence of intelligence and higher cognitive functions in the brain, and explore hypotheses of diseases as well as treatments.
Raphaël DoenlenEducation Master | Neurosciences 2004 – 2004 University of Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg (France) Master | Psycho-pharmacology 2005 – 2005 University of Bordeaux 1 (France) PhD | Life Sciences - Neuro-immunology 2005 – 2008 Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, ETH Zürich (Switzerland) Directed by Principal supervisor: Prof. Joram Feldon, Institute of Behavioural Neurobiology, ETH Zürich (Switzerland)Co-supervisor: Prof. Manfred S
