Christophe BallifChristophe Ballif is director of the Phototovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratoryb) (PV-Lab at the institute of microengineering (IMT) in Neuchâtel (part of the EPFL since 2009). The lab focus is on the science and technology of high efficiency heterojunction crystalline cells,so-called passivating contacts for solar cells, multi-junction solar cells include novel generation Perovskite on innovative optical high speed detector and on various macroelectronics application. It also deals with energy management with a focus on integration of solar electricity into the energy system. The PV-Lab has strongly contributed to technology transfer and industrialization of novel devices and full technology with numerous companies. Christophe Ballif graduated as a physicist from the EPFL in 1994, where he also obtained in 1998 his Phd degree working on novel PV materials. He accomplished his postdoctoral research at NREL (Golden, US) on compound semiconductor solar cells (CIGS and CdTe). He worked then at the Fraunhofer ISE (Ge) on crystalline silicon photovoltaics (monocrystalline and multi-crystalline) until 2003 and then at the EMPA in Thun (CH) before becoming full professor at the University of Neuchâtel IMT in 2004, taking over the chair of Prof. A. Shah. Since 2013, C.Ballif is also the director of the new CSEM PV-Center, also located in Neuchâtel. The CSEM PV-Center is focussing more on industrialisation and technology transfer in the field of solar energy, including solar electricity management and storage. At the core of the CSEM PV-center activities lies several "pilot lines" for various kinds of solar cells manufacturing, with a focus coating technologies, wet chemistry processes for crystalline silicon, metalisation techniques for solar cells, and a platform for developing "ideal packaging solutions and polymers" for PV modules. In addition, joined facitilites between CSEM and EPFL of over 800 m2 are available for modules manufacturing, measuring and accelerated aging. CSEM PV-center has also full team dedicated to storage and energy systems and operates a joined center with BFH in Biel for research on electrochemical storage. He (co-) authored over 500 journal and technical papers, as well as several patents. He is an elected member of the SATW, member of the scientific council of the Swiss AEE, and member of the board of the EPFL Energy center. In 2016, he recieved the Becquerel prize for his contributions to the field of high efficiency photovoltaics.
Jürgen BruggerI am a Professor of Microengineering and co-affiliated to Materials Science. Before joining EPFL I was at the MESA Research Institute of Nanotechnology at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory, and at the Hitachi Central Research Laboratory, in Tokyo, Japan. I received a Master in Physical-Electronics and a PhD degree from Neuchâtel University, Switzerland. Research in my laboratory focuses on various aspects of MEMS and Nanotechnology. My group contributes to the field at the fundamental level as well as in technological development, as demonstrated by the start-ups that spun off from the lab. In our research, key competences are in micro/nanofabrication, additive micro-manufacturing, new materials for MEMS, increasingly for wearable and biomedical applications. Together with my students and colleagues we published over 200 peer-refereed papers and I had the pleasure to supervise over 25 PhD students. Former students and postdocs have been successful in receiving awards and starting their own scientific careers. I am honoured for the appointment in 2016 as Fellow of the IEEE “For contributions to micro and nano manufacturing technology”. In 2017 my lab was awarded an ERC AdvG in the field of advanced micro-manufacturing.
Mihai Adrian IonescuAdrian M. Ionescu is Full Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland. He received the B.S./M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania and the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, France, in 1989 and 1997, respectively. He has held staff and/or visiting positions at LETI-CEA, Grenoble, France and INP Grenoble, France and Stanford University, USA, in 1998 and 1999. Dr. Ionescu has published more than 600 articles in international journals and conferences. He received many Best Paper Awards in international conferences, the Annual Award of the Technical Section of the Romanian Academy of Sciences in 1994 and the Blondel Medal in 2009 for contributions to the progress in engineering sciences in the domain of electronics. He is the 2013 recipient of the IBM Faculty Award in Engineering. He served the IEDM and VLSI conference technical committees and was the Technical Program Committee (Co)Chair of ESSDERC in 2006 and 2013. He is a member of the SATW. He is director of the Laboratory of Micro/Nanoelectronic Devices (NANOLAB).
Luis Guillermo Villanueva TorrijoGuillermo Villanueva is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausane (EPFL), Switzerland, in the Mechanical Engineering Institute (IGM). Before joining EPFL he was a Marie Curie post-doctoral scholar at DTU (Denmark) and Caltech (California, US); and before a post-doc at EPFL-LMIS1. He received his M.Sc. in Physics in Zaragoza (Spain) and his PhD from the UAB in Barcelona (Spain).
Since the start of his PhD (2002), Prof. Villanueva has been active in the fields of NEMS/MEMS for sensing, having expertise from the design and fabrication to the characterization and applicability. He has co-authored more than 75 papers in peer-reviewed journals (h-index of 24 WoK, 32 GoS) and more than 100 contributions to international conferences.
He is serving, or has served, on the program committees of IEEE-NEMS, IEEE-Sensors, MNE, IEEE-FCS and Transducers. He is editor of Microelectronic Engineering. He has co-organized MNE2014 and SNC2015; and he is currently co-organizing the short courses at Transducers 2019 and the 16th International Workshop on Nanomechanical Sensors (NMC2019).
Anna Fontcuberta i Morral2014 Associate Professor at the Institut des Matériaux, EPFL
2008 Assistant Professor Tenure Track at the Institut des Matériaux, EPFL
2009 Habilitation in Physics, Technische Universität München
2005-2010 Marie Curie Excellence Grant Team Leader at Walter Schottky Institut, Technische Universität München, on leave from Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France)
2004-2005 Visiting Scientist at the California Institute of Technology, on leave from CNRS; Senior Scientist and co-founder of Aonex Technologies (a startup company for large area layer transfer of InP and Ge on foreign substrates for the main application of multi-junction solar cells)
2003 Permanent Research Fellow at CNRS, Ecole Polytechnique, France
2001-2002 Postdoctoral Scholar at the California Institute of Technology
Study of wafer bonding and hydrogen-induced exfoliation processes for integration of mismatched materials in views of photovoltaic applications
Sponsor: Professor Harry A. Atwater
1998-2001 PhD in Materials Science, Ecole Polytechnique
Study of polymorphous silicon: growth mechanisms, optical and structural properties. Application to Solar Cells and Thin Film Transistors
Advisor: Pere Roca i Cabarrocas
1997-1998 Diplôme dEtudes Approfondis (D.E.A.) in Materials Science at Université Paris XI, France .
1993-1997 BA in Physics at Universitat de Barcelona
David Atienza AlonsoDavid Atienza Alonso is an associate professor of EE and director of the Embedded Systems Laboratory (ESL) at EPFL, Switzerland. He received his MSc and PhD degrees in computer science and engineering from UCM, Spain, and IMEC, Belgium, in 2001 and 2005, respectively. His research interests include system-level design methodologies for multi-processor system-on-chip (MPSoC) servers and edge AI architectures. Dr. Atienza has co-authored more than 350 papers, one book, and 12 patents in these previous areas. He has also received several recognitions and award, among them, the ICCAD 10-Year Retrospective Most Influential Paper Award in 2020, Design Automation Conference (DAC) Under-40 Innovators Award in 2018, the IEEE TCCPS Mid-Career Award in 2018, an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2016, the IEEE CEDA Early Career Award in 2013, the ACM SIGDA Outstanding New Faculty Award in 2012, and a Faculty Award from Sun Labs at Oracle in 2011. He has also earned two best paper awards at the VLSI-SoC 2009 and CST-HPCS 2012 conference, and five best paper award nominations at the DAC 2013, DATE 2013, WEHA-HPCS 2010, ICCAD 2006, and DAC 2004 conferences. He serves or has served as associate editor of IEEE Trans. on Computers (TC), IEEE Design & Test of Computers (D&T), IEEE Trans. on CAD (T-CAD), IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing (T-SUSC), and Elsevier Integration. He was the Technical Program Chair of DATE 2015 and General Chair of DATE 2017. He served as President of IEEE CEDA in the period 2018-2019 and was GOLD member of the Board of Governors of IEEE CASS from 2010 to 2012. He is a Distinguished Member of ACM and an IEEE Fellow.
Hans Peter HerzigDr. Hans Peter Herzig is Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Past President of the European Optical Society (EOS). His current research interests include refractive and diffractive micro-optics, nano-scale optics and optical MEMS.
Hans Peter Herzig received his diploma in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1978. From 1978 to 1982 he was a scientist with the Optics Development Department of Kern in Aarau, Switzerland, working in lens design and optical testing. In 1983, he became a graduate research assistant with the Applied Optics Group at the Institute of Microtechnology of the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, working in the field of holographic optical elements. In 1987, he received his PhD degree in optics. From 1989 to 2001 he was head of the micro-optics research group in Neuchâtel. From 2002 to 2008 he was a full professor and head of the Applied Optics Laboratory at the University of Neuchâtel. Professor Herzig joined the faculty at EPFL in January 2009.
He is member of OSA, IEEE Photonics Society and Fellow of EOS. 2009-2010 he was President of the European Optical Society (EOS), 2001-2009 Vice-President of the Swiss Society of Optics and Microscopy and 2012-2014 Vice-President of ICO. Dr. Herzig is in the editorial board of different scientific journals (JM3, Optical Review, JEOS). He served as Conference Chairman for international conferences of EOS, IEE, IEEE/LEOS, OSA and SPIE; and as Guest Editor of three special issues of IEEE, OSA journals. He is editor of a well-known book on micro-optics (published in English and Chinese), author of 14 book chapters, over 150 peer reviewed articles and 300 conference proceedings.
Paul MuraltPaul Muralt received a diploma in experimental physics in 1978 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH in Zurich. He accomplished his Ph.D. thesis in the field of commensurate-incommensurate phase transitions at the Solid State Laboratory of ETH. In the years 1984 and 1985 he held a post doctoral position at the IBM Research Laboratory in Zurich where he pioneered the application of scanning tunneling microscopy to surface potential imaging. In 1987, after a stay at the Free University of Berlin, he joined the Balzers group in Liechtenstein. He specialized in sputter deposition techniques, and managed since 1991 a department for development and applications of Physical Vapor Deposition and PECVD processes. In 1993, he joined the Ceramics Laboratory of EPFL in Lausanne. AS group leader for thin films and MEMS devices, he specialized in piezoelectric and pyroelectric MEMS with mostly Pb(Zr,Ti)O3 and AlN thin film. His research interests are in thin film growth in general, and more specifically in property assessment of small ferroelectric structures, in integration issues of ferroelectric and other polar materials, property-microstructure relationships, and applications of polar materials in semiconductor and micro-electro-mechanical devices. More recently he extended his interests to oxide thin films of ionic conductors. The focus in piezoelectric thin films was directed towards AlN-ScN alloys. He gives lectures in thin film processing, micro fabrication, and surface analysis. He authored or co-authored more than 230 scientific articles. He became Fellow of IEEE in 2013. In 2005, he received an outstanding achievement award at the International Symposium on Integrated Ferroelectrics (ISIF), and in 2016 the B.C. Sawyer Memorial award.
Chairman of the International Workshops on Piezoelectric MEMS(http://www.piezomems2011.org/) Alexandre SchmidAlexandre Schmid received the M.Sc. degree in microengineering and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1994 and 2000, respectively. Since 1994, he has been with the EPFL, working with the Integrated Systems Laboratory as a Research and Teaching Assistant, and with the Electronics Laboratories as a Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2002, he was a Senior Research Associate with the Microelectronic Systems Laboratory, where he has been conducting research in the fields of bioelectronic interfaces and implantable biomedical electronics, nonconventional signal processing and neuromorphic hardware, and reliability of nanoelectronic devices, and also teaches with the Microengineering and Electrical Engineering Departments of EPFL. Since 2011, he is a Maître d'Enseignement et de Recherche (MER) Faculty Member with EPFL. He is a coauthor of two books, Reliability of Nanoscale Circuits and Systems, Methodologies and Circuit Architectures, Springer, 2011, and Wireless Cortical Implantable Systems, Springer, 2013, and a coeditor of one book, as well as over 100 articles published in journals and conferences.
Dr. Schmid has served as the General Chair of the Fourth International Conference on Nano-Networks in 2009 and has been serving as an Associate Editor of the Institute of Electrical, Information, and Communication Engineers Electronics Express since 2009.
Sandro CarraraSandro Carrara is an IEEE Fellow for his outstanding record of accomplishments in the field of design of nanoscale biological CMOS sensors. He is also the recipient of the IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award in 2016 for his leadership in the emerging area of co-design in Bio/Nano/CMOS interfaces. He is a Professor of the EPFL in Lausanne (Switzerland), and head of the "Bio/CMOS Interfaces" (BCI) research group. He is former professor of optical and electrical biosensors at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Biophysics (DIBE) of the University of Genoa (Italy) and former professor of nanobiotechnology at the University of Bologna (Italy). He holds a PhD in Biochemistry & Biophysics from University of Padua (Italy), a Master degree in Physics from University of Genoa (Italy), and a diploma in Electronics from National Institute of Technology in Albenga (Italy). His scientific interests are on electrical phenomena of nano-bio-structured films, and include CMOS design of biochips based on proteins and DNA. Along his carrier, he published 7 books, one as author with Springer on Bio/CMOS interfaces and, more recently, a Handbook of Bioelectronics with Cambridge University Press. He has more than 250 scientific publications and is author of 13 patents. He is now Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Sensors Journal, the largest journal among 2019 IEEE publications; he is also founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal BioNanoScience by Springer, and Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems. He is a member of the IEEE Sensors Council and his Executive Committee. He was a member of the Board of Governors (BoG) of the IEEE Circuits And Systems Society (CASS). He has been appointed as IEEE Sensors Council Distinguished Lecturer for the years 2017-2019, and CASS Distinguished Lecturer for the years 2013-2014. His work received several international recognitions: several Top-25 Hottest-Articles (2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, and two times in 2012) published in highly ranked international journals such as Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Sensors and Actuators B, IEEE Sensors journal, and Thin Solid Films; a NATO Advanced Research Award in 1996 for the original contribution to the physics of single-electron conductivity in nano-particles; six Best Paper Awards at the IEEE Sensors Conference 2019 (Montreal) in 2019, Conferences IEEE NGCAS in 2017 (Genoa), MOBIHEALTH in 2016 (Milan), IEEE PRIME in 2015 (Glasgow), in 2010 (Berlin), and in 2009 (Cork); three Best Poster Awards at the EMBEC Conference in 2017 (Tampere, Finland), Nanotera workshop in 2011 (Bern), and NanoEurope Symposium in 2009 (Rapperswil). He also received the Best Referees Award from the journal Biosensor and Bioelectronics in 2006. From 1997 to 2000, he was a member of an international committee at the ELETTRA Synchrotron in Trieste. From 2000 to 2003, he was scientific leader of a National Research Program (PNR) in the filed of Nanobiotechnology. He was an internationally esteemed expert of the evaluation panel of the Academy of Finland in a research program for the years 2010-2013. He has been the General Chairman of the Conference IEEE BioCAS 2014, the premier worldwide international conference in the area of circuits and systems for biomedical applications
Nicolas GrandjeanNicolas Grandjean received a PhD degree in physics from the University ofNice Sophia Antipolis in 1994 and shortly thereafter joined the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) as a permanent staff member. In 2004, he was appointed tenure-track assistant professor at the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) where he created the Laboratory for advanced semiconductors for photonics and electronics. He was promoted to full professor in 2009. He was the director of the Institute of Condensed Matter Physics from 2012 to 2016 and then moved to the University of California at Santa Barbara where he spent 6 months as a visiting professor. Since 2018, he is the head of the School of Physics at the EPFL. He was awarded the Sandoz Family Foundation Grant for Academic Promotion, received the “Nakamura Lecturer” Award in 2010, the "Quantum Devices Award” at the 2017 Compound Semiconductor Week, and “2016 best teacher” award from the EPFL Physics School. His research interests are focused on the physics of nanostructures and III-V nitride semiconductor quantum photonics.
