Kevin SivulaSee webpage for more info limno.epfl.ch
Teaching & PhD PhD Students Odile Louise Andres, Arthur Eliot Bouchez, Benjamin Goldman, Nicolas Johannes Diercks, Aurélie Fanny Marie Célérien, Jiajun Li, Louise Marie Foltzer-De Cian, Melanie Victoria Johanning, Nils William Laurent Golay Past EPFL PhD Students Andrea Gasperini, Pauline Bornoz, Xavier Adrian Jeanbourquin, Xiaoyun Yu, Mathieu Steven Prévot, Muhammad Aiman Bin Rahmanudin Hamdan, Nhât-Tân Vuong, Yongpeng Liu, Arvindh Sekar, Barbara Alexandra Primera
Qiucheng XuExpertise
- Operando Water and Ion Transport: I pioneered operando high-energy X-ray scattering and fluorescence (WAXS/SAXS/XRF) to directly visualize water and ion transport in membrane–electrode assemblies. These studies revealed how water movement, flooding, and salt formation govern degradation in CO/CO2 electrolysis, establishing the dynamic transport mechanisms in confined electrochemical environments. (Nat. Nanotechnol. 2025; Joule 2024; Nat. Catal. 2023)2. Design of Membrane-Electrode Interface: I
Raffaella BuonsantiTeaching & PhD PhD Students Riya Gupta, Jennifer Calderon Mora, Coline Boulanger, Moritz Tritschler, Marco Fabbiano, Seyedmohamadjavad Chabok, Hugh Andrew Warkentin Past EPFL PhD Students Chethana Janardhana Gadiyar, Seryio Saris, Valeria Mantella, Seyedehbehnaz Varandili, Pranit Srinivas Iyengar, Yannick Thomas Guntern, Jan Vávra, Laia Castilla Amorós, Valery Okatenko, Ona Segura Lecina, Ludovic Emile Frédy Zaza, Petru Pasquale Albertini Courses Introduction to chemical engineering Laboratory Works
Mor-Miri MishkovskyI am a chemist, graduated Cum Laude in 2002 from Tel Aviv University in Israel. I obtained a PhD in Physical Chemistry from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel on the development of new technology for rapid detection of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopic data aiming at reducing the measurement time from hours to a fraction of second with Prof. Lucio Frydman. My thesis “Methodological Developments in Ultrafast Multidimensional NMR” granted me the Auto Swartz excellence award in 2007. Since 2009 I am working with the Laboratory of Functional and Metabolic Imaging at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, on the development of hyperpolarized (HP) magnetic resonance spectroscopy (MRS) methodologies for monitoring biochemical processes in real-time.My research is focused on the development of Magnetic Resonance (MR) Molecular Imaging by dissolution dynamic nuclear polarization (dDNP). HP agents to interrogate biochemical processes in real-time are applied in vivo in the healthy brain and disease models, aiming at improving our understanding of cerebral function and metabolism toward better clinical diagnostics and therapy.
Farzaneh Fadaei TiraniTeaching & PhD Courses Principles and Applications of X-ray Diffraction CH-632 Basic theoretical aspects of Crystallography and the interaction between X-ray radiation and matter. Experimental aspects of materials-oriented powder and single crystal diffraction. Familiarization with modern X-ray diffractometers.
Marinella MazzantiExpertise
Inorganic Chemistry, Coordination ChemistryF-elements Chemistry
Teaching & PhD Past EPFL PhD Students Julie Renée Michelle Andrez, Marta Falcone, Radmila Faizova, Davide Toniolo, Luciano Barluzzi, Aurélien René Willauer, Nadir Jori, Dieuwertje Katelijn Modder, Hsueh Fang-Che, Keerthi Shivaraam Rangaraj Ananthakumar, Mikhail Batov Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Andreichenko Andrei Courses Chemistry of f elements CH-427 The course will provide a synopsis of the chemistry of f e
Ivica ZivkovicTeaching & PhD PhD Students Berna Esmer Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Virgile Favre, Bhushan Hegde, Yikai Yang Courses Magnetism in materials PHYS-491 The lectures will provide an introduction to magnetism in materials, covering fundamentals of spin and orbital degrees of freedom, interactions between moments and some typical ordering patterns. Selected experimental techniques and their application in current research will be presented.
Kristina SchoonjansExpertise
Bile acid signalingNutrient sensingIntermediary metabolismMetabolic disorders
Teaching & PhD PhD Students Adrien Faure Past EPFL PhD Students Pan Xu, Ece Yildiz, Nadia Bresciani, Yu Sun, Francesca Pontanari, Alejandro Alonso Calleja Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Mitsunori Nomura, Pan Xu, Katyayanee Neopane, Lucie Camille Chanvillard, Jakob Josef Langer, Bilge Sen Elçi Courses General Biology BIOENG-110 The purpose of the course is to provide a general overview of the biolo
Pierre MagistrettiPierre J. Magistretti is an internationally-recognized neuroscientist who has made significant contributions in the field of brain energy metabolism. His group has discovered some of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie the coupling between neuronal activity and energy consumption by the brain.
This work has considerable ramifications for the understanding of the origin of the signals detected with the current functional brain imaging techniques used in neurological and psychiatric research (see for example Magistretti et al, Science, 283: 496 497, 1999). He is the author of over 100 articles published in peer-reviewed journals.
He has given over 80 invited lectures at international meetings or at universities in Europe and North America, including the 2000 Talairach Lecture at the Functional Mapping of the Human Brain Conference. In November 2000 he has been a Mc Donnel Visiting Scholar at Washington University School of Medicine.
Pierre J. Magistretti is the President-Elect (2002 2004) of the Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) which has a membership of over 15000 European neuroscientists. He has been first president of the Swiss Society for Neuroscience (1997-1999) and the first Chairman of the Department of Neurosciences of the University of Lausanne (1996 1998).
Pierre J. Magistretti is Professor of Physiology (since 1988) at the University of Lausanne Medical School. He has been Vice-Dean of the University of Lausanne Medical School from 1996 to 2000. Pierre Magistretti, is Director of the Brain Mind Institute at EPFL and Director of the Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience of the University of Lausanne and CHUV. He is also Director of the NCCR SYNAPSY "the synaptic bases of mental diseases".
POSITIONS AND HONORS
MAIN POSITION HELD
1988-2004 Professor of Physiology, University of Lausanne Medical School
1996-2000 Vice-Dean for Preclinical Departments, University of Lausanne Medical School
2001-2004 Chairman, Department of Physiology, University of Lausanne Medical School
2004-present Professor and Director, Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience, Department of Psychiatry, University of Lausanne Medical School and Hospitals (UNIL-CHUV) (Joint appointment with EPFL)
2005-2008 Professor and Co-Director, Brain Mind Institute, Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne (Joint appointment with UNIL-CHUV)
2007-present Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of Centre dImagerie Biomédicale (CIBM), an Imaging Consortium of the Universities, University Hospitals of Lausanne and Geneva and of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
2008-present Professor and Director, Brain Mind Institute, Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne Joint appointment with UNIL-CHUV)
2010-present Director, National Center for Competence in Research (NCCR)
The synaptic bases of mental diseases of the Swiss National Science Foundation
2010-present Secretary General, International Brain Research Organization (IBRO)
MAIN HONORS AND AWARDS
1997 Recipient of the Theodore-Ott Prize of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences
2001 Elected Member of Academia Europaea
2001 Elected Member of the Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences, ad personam
2002 Recipient of the Emil Kraepelin Guest Professorship, Max Planck Institute für Psychiatry, Münich
2006 Elected Professor at Collège de France, Paris, International Chair 2007-2008
2009 Goethe Award for Psychoanalytic Scholarship, Canadian Psychological Association
2011 Camillo Golgi Medal Award, Golgi Fondation
2011 Elected Member of the American College of NeuroPsychopharmacology (ACNP)
Rolf GruetterAwards:
1999 Young Investigator Award Plenary Lectureship
, International Society for Neurochemistry
2011 Fellow
, ESMRMB
2011 Teaching Award
, Section Sciences de la Vie, EPFL
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.
Anne-Sophie ChauvinWeb of Science Researcher ID F-4905-2011
Google Scholar page: https://scholar.google.ch/citations?user=O_HhJUEAAAAJ&hl=fr&oi=ao
ORCID number is 0000-0001-9222-3866
Anne-Sophie Chauvin studied chemistry and biology at the university Paris V-René Descartes in France where she did a PhD in organic chemistry, working on mimetic complexes of the active site of Nitrile Hydratase, under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Claude Chottard. On 1999 she moved for 20 months to the University of Geneva, for a post-doctoral stay under the supervision of Prof. Alexandre Alexakis, where she focused on the determination of the absolute configuration of chiral alcohols using Organophosphorous Diamine Derivatizing Agents by 31P and 1H NMR Spectroscopy. On 2000 she joined the group of Prof Jean-Claude G. Bünzli and was appointed part-time lecturer in 2001, assuming teaching and research responsibilities. On 2006, she obtained the habilitation to direct research from the University René Descartes (HDR, Paris V, France) and since october 2007 she is Maître d'Enseignement et de Recherche at the EPFL. In 2010, she joigned the Laboratory for Photonics and Interfaces (LPI), headed by Pr. Michaël Graëtzel. Since the end of 2014, with the arrival of Dr Marinella Mazzanti at EPFL, she is back to lanthanide chemistry, dealing with coordination polymers.
Her research interests concern supramolecular chemistry with the design of ligands which form water soluble complexes with luminescent lanthanides in view of biological applications. She is also interested in the synthesis of ligands and polymers for the extraction of lanthanide ions with high selectivity, and in the development of invisibke inks. She also developed organic dyes for dyes sensitized solar cells DSSC. She is now focusing on coordination polymers with luminescent properties and catalytic activity.
Anne-Sophie Chauvin is involved in the teaching of General and Analytical Chemistry for students enrolled on first year in Pharmacy and Biology (UNIL): ex-cathedra courses (Chimie Générale et analytique I et II, approfondissement en chimie analytique pour pharmaciens) and exercices.
She is in charge of practical sessions for students enroled in chemistry, forensic sciences, pharmacy and biology.
She is elected at the FSB Faculty Council and was member of the EPFL Assembly (AE) for 6 years, until 2018.
She was member of the Management committee of the Cost CM 1006 action entitled Eufen: European F-Element Network.
She is Member of the Swiss Chemical Society (SCS) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). Albert RenkenTeaching & PhD Past EPFL PhD Students Serge Maeder, Jacques Membrez, Stéphane Porchet, Philippe Menoud, Brigitta Frank, Harvey Randall, Wolfgang Zimmerer, Frédéric Van Vyve, Serge Golay, Jianzhong Yang, Stéphane Dubuis, Philippe Warnery, Anders Nattorp, Christian Spühler, Laurent Cavin, Miriam Lorenzi, Bastien Monnerat, André Rouge, Olivier Wolfrath, Peter Stahl, Ralf Maurer, Konrad Geissler, Volker Höller, Benoît Louis, Pierre Reuse, Fabio Rainone, Eric Joannet, Chrystèle Horny Past EPFL PhD Students as co
Henning Paul-Julius StahlbergMission
We use high-resolution cryo-electron microscopy to study neurodegeneration and other protein systems. We also develop novel imaging technology in the areas of electron microscopy hardware and applications, sample preparation, data collection schemes, and data analysis software systems. The Stahlberg group is supported by the University of Lausanne, Faculty of Medicine and Biology, and by the EPFL, Faculty of Basic Sciences, Physics Institute. The LBEM is a research laboratory of both UNIL and EPFL.
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.
Paul Joseph DysonPaul Dyson joined the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at the EPFL in 2002 where he heads the Laboratory of Organometallic and Medicinal Chemistry and between 2008 and 2016 chaired the Institute. He has won several prizes including the Werner Prize of the Swiss Chemical Society in 2004, the Award for Outstanding Achievements in Bioorganometallic Chemistry in 2010, the Centennial Luigi Sacconi Medal of the Italian Chemical Society in 2011, the Bioinorganic Chemistry Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2015, the European Sustainable Chemistry Award of the European Chemical Society in 2018 and the Green Chemistry Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2020. He is also a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher and has an H-index >110 (web of science and google scholar). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2010, a Fellow of the European Academy of Science in 2019 and a life-long fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2020. Over the years he has held visiting professorships at the University of Bourgogne, University of Pierre et Marie Curie, University of Vienna, University of Rome Tor Vergara, Chimie Paristech and Shangai Jiao Tong University.Since 2016 he has been Member of the Council of the Division of Mathematics, Natural and Engineering Sciences at the Swiss National Science Foundation.Between 2016-2021 he has been Member of the Council of the Division of Mathematics, Natural and Engineering Sciences at the Swiss National Science Foundation. In 2021 he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Basic Sciences.
