Xile HuXile Hu was born in 1978 in Putian, southeastern China. He entered the Peking University in Beijing in 1996. Besides learning too little chemistry, his biggest regret in the college was not able to correct his southern accent in Mandarin. After graduated from PKU, he went to the United States and began his doctoral studies at the University of California, San Diego. In December 2004, he finished with a Ph.D. in chemistry and some fond memories of the beautiful city of San Diego. He then moved to the Los Angeles area and become a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology. There he enjoyed numerous stimulating scientific (and other) discussions with friends and colleagues. He also made plenty of friends outside the campus and was a frequent in many local Chinese restaurants. In 2007, after two pleasant visits to Switzerland, he decided to move across the continent one more time and join the faculty of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He now directs the Laboratory of Inorganic Synthesis and Catalysis and is interested in developing chemistry for synthesis, energy and sustainability.
Kumar Varoon AgrawalExpertise
Prof. Kumar Varoon Agrawal leads research at EPFL on advanced membrane materials and processes for energy-efficient molecular separations. His work focuses on atomically thin porous graphene film, and two-dimensional zeolite & metal–organic framework membranes that enable selective transport of gases and ions, with applications in carbon capture, hydrogen purification, ammonia separation, and resource recovery. By combining materials chemistry, nanofluidics, transport phenomena, atomistic simulati
Emad OveisiDr Emad Oveisi is a senior scientist at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Electron Microscopy (CIME), EPFL.
Emad received a BSc in Metallurgy and Materials Engineering (2005) and an MSc in Materials Science (2008) both from the University of Tehran (Iran). He graduated with a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at EPFL in 2014 for a thesis on the "Three-Dimensional STEM Imaging of Dislocations" under the direction of Prof. Cécile Hébert. The PhD thesis at the Electron Spectrometry and Microscopy Laboratory (LSME), served as an introduction to many of the advanced microscopy techniques that have proven to be a platform for his research career. A post-doctoral research at the centre for electron microscopy gave him the opportunity to peruse a cutting-edge research on one of the most modern aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopes.Since the inauguration of the Energypolis campus of EPFL in Sion, he has been the manager and reference scientist of the electron microscopy platform of EPFL-Valais, working with 9 research groups and more than 200 researchers. In addition to this core responsibility, he provides advanced microscopy consulting and service to EPFL scientists and assist their research to the highest level possible.
Emad Oveisi’s research focuses on the application and development of novel electron microscopy techniques, with emphasis on 3D imaging of crystal defects, as well as the precision measurement of materials properties using aberration-corrected S/TEM. In 2018, he received the prestigious Microscopy Innovation Award for inventing “Single-shot three-dimensional electron imaging”, a novel technique that enables 3D imaging of in situ dynamics.
In 2016 Emad was elected as an interim representative for the scientific staff ("corps intermédiaire") to the Council of the Institute of Chemistry (ISIC). Since 2019, he is a member of EPFL Teachers’ Council (CCE) and has been elected as one of its four bureau members. This role allows him to be exposed to new ideas and pedagogical challenges, as well being involved in discussions with the Vice Presidency of Education (VPE) and other teaching organisations for defining teaching strategies at the EPFL.
Berend SmitBerend Smit received an MSc in Chemical Engineering in 1987 and an MSc in Physics both from the Technical University in Delft (the Netherlands). He received in 1990 cum laude PhD in Chemistry from Utrecht University (the Netherlands). He was a (senior) Research Physicists at Shell Research from 1988-1997, Professor of Computational Chemistry at the University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands) 1997-2007.
In 2004 Berend Smit was elected Director of the European Center of Atomic and Molecular Computations (CECAM) Lyon France. Since 2007 he is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at U.C. Berkeley and Faculty Chemist at Materials Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Since 2014 he has been director of the Energy Center at EPFL.
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
Jieping ZhuTeaching & PhD PhD Students Morgane Elodie Marie Delattre, Paul Jean Gri, Clément Paul Adrien Rols, Yun Hao Shawn Teh Past EPFL PhD Students Jean-Baptiste Gualtierotti, Ala Bunescu, Thomas Buyck, Olivier Wagnières, Minh Tu Ha, Dylan Jean Robert Dagoneau, Antonin François Roland Clemenceau, Cyril Piemontesi, Nicolas David Gaeng, Mathias Mamboury, Raphaël Beltran, Balázs Budai, Teerawat Songsichan, Alexandre Julien Florent Leclair, Bastien Delayre, Rémi Julien Sylvain Andres, Dina Boyarskaya, Rémi Lavernhe,
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.
