Paola ViganòTeaching & PhD PhD Students Noélie Marion Charlotte Lecoanet, Shyam Sunder Sirimalla Past EPFL PhD Students Roberto Sega, Antoine Vialle, Tommaso Pietropolli, Sylvie Tram Nguyen, Anna Karla De Almeida Milani, Elena Calafati, Flore Jeanne Marie Andrea Guichot Courses Hidden rivers PENS-219 Hidden Rivers aims at fulfilling the need for an interdisciplinary understanding of the problematics surrounding urban streams, through ecological, hydrological, and spatial relationships found in riversc
Stéphane JoostExpertise
Geographic Information Science and spatial statisticsMolecular ecology, Landscape genomics, Seascape genomicsSpatial epidemiology, Health geographics
Publications Publications- List of publications
Teaching & PhD PhD Students Marco André Vieira Ruas, Manon Laetitia Pribille, Martine Valérie Besse Past EPFL PhD Students Estelle Rochat, Solange Catherine Gaillard, Oliver Michele Selmoni, Anaïs Ladoy, Annie Sandrine Guillaume Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Sylvie Stucki, Kevin Leempoel, Martí
Hannes Markus PeterCurrent work
I am a microbial ecologist and mainly interested in factors shaping bacterial communities and functioning in freshwater ecosystems. I use combinations of field observations, experiments and molecular techniques to test hypotheses regarding the assembly of microbial communities, the influence of environmental variability and relationships between diversity and funcioning. I enjoy working in alpine environments, which are sensitive to climate change and represent excellent model systems.
Teaching
Pascal FrossardTeaching & PhD PhD Students Yiming Qin, Alba Carballo Castro, Elisa Messori, Ke Wang, Sevda Ögüt, Tuna Alikasifoglu, William Cappelletti, Manuel Madeira, Mahdi Amiri, Ortal Yona Senouf, Vasiliki Rizou, Cem Bilaloglu, Abdellah Rahmani, Amel Abdelraheem, Jérémy Jean Philippe Baffou, Adam Hazimeh, Vincent Jung, Yike Zhao Past EPFL PhD Students Dan Jurca, Jean-Paul Wagner, Ivana Radulovic, Ivana Tosic, Effrosyni Kokiopoulou, Zafer Arican, Vijayaraghavan Thirumalai, Tamara Tosic, Eirina Bourtsoulatze, Elif Vur
Antoine Maurice ArborinoTeaching & PhD Courses Fluvial hydraulics and river training works CIVIL-410 The course provides the students with a solid theoretical background in fluvial hydraulics, as well as the basic concepts in river engineering that aim at conciliating hazard protection and environmental protection. Real-world examples illustrate the course. Hidden rivers PENS-219 Hidden Rivers aims at fulfilling the need for an interdisciplinary understanding of the problematics surrounding urban st
Jan SkaloudExpertise
Satellite positioning, inertial and integrated navigation Sensor orientation and calibration, attitude determination Mobile mapping, airborne laser scanning Adjustment methods, Kalman Filtering
Mission
Teaching in 3 EPFL sections and 2 faculties, director of ESO lab.
Books / Monographs J. Skaloud and M. Cramer, «Data Capture,» in GIS Handbook, W. Kresse and D. Danko, Eds. Springer, 2011. D. Lichti and J. Skaloud, «Registration and Calibration,» in Airborne and terrestrial laser scanning, H.-G. Ma
Giovanni De CesareExpertise
Numerical simulation and physical modeling of hydraulic works and schemes; reservoir sedimentation and turbidity currents; reservoir sediment management; Ultrasonic Doppler flow measurement; river training work and restoration; soil bioengineering and nature based solutions; fluvial eco-morphology; rapid transients in pressurized waterways; technology transfer, commissioned studies and expert reports in applied hydraulics, hydraulic constructions and infrastructures; organization of continuous edu
Hervé LissekExpertise
Acoustics and audio engineering, Electroacoustics.Room acoustics.Active noise control.Acoustic metamaterials.Assisted reverberation.Psychoacoustics.Sound spatialization
Expertise
Acoustics and audio engineering, Electroacoustics.Room acoustics.Active noise control.Acoustic metamaterials.Assisted reverberation.Psychoacoustics.Sound spatialization
Mission
Head of the Acoustic Group at the Laboratory of Wave Engineering LWE. Research topics :Active Electroacoustic Resonators: turning conventional lou
Dario FloreanoProf. Dario Floreano is director of the Laboratory of Intelligent Systems at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2010, he is the founding director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Robotics, a research program that brings together more than 20 labs across Switzerland. Prof. Floreano holds an M.A. in Vision, an M.S. in Neural Computation, and a PhD in Robotics. He has held research positions at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, at Caltech/JPL, and at Harvard University. His main research interests are Robotics and A.I. at the convergence of biology and engineering. Prof. Floreano made pioneering contributions to the fields of evolutionary robotics, aerial robotics, and soft robotics. He served in numerous advisory boards and committees, including the Future and Emerging Technologies division of the European Commission, the World Economic Forum Agenda Council, the International Society of Artificial Life, the International Neural Network Society, and in the editorial committee of several scientific journals. In addition, he helped spinning off two drone companies (senseFly.com and Flyability.com) and a non-for-profit portal on robotics and A.I. (RoboHub.org). Books
Manuale sulle Reti Neurali, il Mulino (in Italian), 1996 (first edition), 2006 (second edition)Evolutionary Robotics, MIT Press, 2000
Bio-Inspired Artificial Intelligence, MIT Press, 2008
Flying Insects and Robots, Springer Verlag, 2010
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.
Aleksandra RadenovicFrom April 2021 Full Professor 2015 -2021 Associate Professor2008-2015 Tenure-Track Assistant Professor2004-2007 Postdoc at the University of California, Berkeley in the group of Prof.Liphardt2003 PhD student of Prof. Dietler in Laboratory of Physics of Living Matter, University of Lausanne 1999 Diploma thesis on the subject of the Raman spectroscopy of beta carotene1994-1999 Physics department at the University of Zagreb1994 baccalaureate, Classical gymnasium
Friedhelm Christoph HummelExpertise
Stroke recovery Healthy Aging Motor Control Motor Learning Cognitive Control Neuroplasticity Non-invasive Brain Stimulation Structural and functional Neuroimaging Connectivity
Postal Address Campus Biotech
Defitech Chair of Clinical Neuroengineering Brain Mind Institute, SV Neuro X Institute, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology EPFL Campus Biotech Rm H4.3.132.084, 9, Chemin des Mines 1202 Geneva
Teaching & PhD PhD Students Maria Ploumitsakou, Simona Losacco, Fabienne Windel, Andrea Protani, Sta
Touradj EbrahimiTouradj EBRAHIMI received his M.Sc. and Ph.D., both in Electrical Engineering, from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1989 and 1992 respectively. In 1993, he was a research engineer at the Corporate Research Laboratories of Sony Corporation in Tokyo, where he conducted research on advanced video compression techniques for storage applications. In 1994, he served as a research consultant at AT&T Bell Laboratories working on very low bitrate video coding. He is currently Professor at EPFL heading its Multimedia Signal Processing Group. He is also the Convenor of JPEG standardization Committee. He was also adjunct Professor with the Center of Quantifiable Quality of Service at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)from 2008 to 2012.
Prof. Ebrahimi has been the recipient of various distinctions and awards, such as the IEEE and Swiss national ASE award, the SNF-PROFILE grant for advanced researchers, Four ISO-Certificates for key contributions to MPEG-4 and JPEG 2000, and the best paper award of IEEE Trans. on Consumer Electronics . He became a Fellow of the international society for optical engineering (SPIE) in 2003. Prof. Ebrahimi has initiated more than two dozen National, European and International cooperation projects with leading companies and research institutes around the world. He is a co-founder of Genista SA, a high-tech start-up company in the field of multimedia quality metrics. In 2002, he founded Emitall SA, start-up active in the area of media security and surveillance. In 2005, he founded EMITALL Surveillance SA, a start-up active in the field of privacy and protection. He is or has been associate Editor with various IEEE, SPIE, and EURASIP journals, such as IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, IEEE Trans. on Multimedia, EURASIP Image Communication Journal, EURASIP Journal of Applied Signal Processing, SPIE Optical Engineering Magazine. Prof. Ebrahimi is a member of Scientific Advisory Board of various start-up and established companies in the general field of Information Technology. He has served as Scientific Expert and Evaluator for Research Funding Agencies such as those of European Commission, The Greek Ministry of Development, The Austrian National Foundation for Scientific Research, The Portuguese Science Foundation, as well as a number of Venture Capital Companies active in the field of Information Technologies and Communication Systems. His research interests include still, moving, and 3D image processing and coding, visual information security (rights protection, watermarking, authentication, data integrity, steganography), new media, and human computer interfaces (smart vision, brain computer interface).
He is the author or the co-author of more than 200 research publications, and holds 14 patents. Prof. Ebrahimi is a member of IEEE, SPIE, ACM and IS&T.
See the URL below for more details:
http://mmspl.epfl.ch Sabine SüsstrunkProf. Dr. Sabine Süsstrunk leads the Image and Visual Representation Lab in the School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) at EPFL since 1999. From 2015-2020, she was also the first Director of the Digital Humanities Institute (DHI), College of Humanities (CdH). Her main research areas are in computational photography, computational imaging, color image processing and computer vision, machine learning, and computational image quality and aesthetics. Sabine has authored and co-authored over 200 publications, of which 7 have received best paper/demo awards, and holds over 10 patents. Sabine served as chair and/or committee member in many international conferences on image processing, computer vision, and image systems engineering. She is President of the Swiss Science Council SSC, Founding Member and Member of the Board (President 2014-2018) of the EPFL-WISH (Women in Science and Humanities) Foundation, Member of the Board of the SRG SSR (Swiss Radio and Television Corporation), and Member of the Board of Largo Films. She received the IS&T/SPIE 2013 Electronic Imaging Scientist of the Year Award for her contributions to color imaging, computational photography, and image quality, and the 2018 IS&T Raymond C. Bowman and the 2020 EPFL AGEPoly IC Polysphere Awards for excellence in teaching. Sabine is a Fellow of IEEE and IS&T.
Alexandre ButtlerI am a honorary professor at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, Lausanne - EPFL. Up to 2019, I was a joint-professor between EPFL (Head of the laboratory of Ecological Systems - ECOS) and the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL for Forest, Snow and Landscape (Head of the research group Pasture Woodlands and Wetlands) and head of the Site WSL-Lausanne. I was also professor at the laboratory of Chrono-Environnement (UMR CNRS 6249) of the University of Franche-Comté, Besançon (France). I am author or co-author of over 160 papers in international ISI cited peer-reviewed journals.
Jean-Marc OdobezExpertise
Computer Vision, machine Learning (Bayesian models, deep learning), multimodal processing.Activity analysis, human behavior understanding, human communication, interaction modeling
Dr Jean-Marc Odobez (Msc 1990, PhD 1994) received his Ph.D degree from Rennes University in 1994 for his PhD dissertation done at INRIA. After 5 years as an assistant professor at the University du Maine, France, he decided to join Idiap, where he is now the Head of the Perception & Activity Understanding Group and adju
Ayberk OzkirliDr. Ayberk Ozkirli is a vision neuroscientist whose research investigates how spatiotemporal context influences visual perception.He completed his PhD in Neuroscience at the Laboratory of Psychophysics at EPFL in 2025, under the supervision of Prof. Michael Herzog and Prof. David Pascucci. He holds an M.Sc. in Bioengineering from EPFL (Switzerland) and a B.Sc. in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Bilkent University (Turkey).His expertise spans neuroimaging, statistics, experimental design, neural
