Darius Ammon KarácsonyTeaching & PhD Courses Cognitive Landscapes PENS-326 This course explores how brainwave dynamics can inform urban design through cross-frequency coupling as a model for adaptability, variability, and integration in urban systems.
Giovanni De MicheliExpertise
Design technologies for integrated systems on silicon, such as synthesis, hw/sw codesign and low-power design, as well as systems on heterogeneous platforms including electrical and biological components.
Scientific Director of EcoCloud Center at EPFL
Directing activities towards creating sustainable computation including AI.Designing energy-savvy data centers and edge devices.
More information
Please read http://si2.epfl.ch/~demichel/
Giovanni De Micheli is a research scientist in electronics and Farhad Rachidi-HaeriFarhad Rachidi (IEEE Fellow, EMP Fellow, Electromagnetics Academy Fellow) was born in Geneva in 1962. He received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, in 1986 and 1991 respectively.
He worked at the Power Systems Laboratory of the same institute until 1996 and had several short stays at the University of Florida and the NASA Kennedy Space Center. In 1997, he joined the Lightning Research Laboratory of the University of Toronto in Canada and from April 1998 until September 1999, he was with Montena EMC in Switzerland. He is currently a titular professor and the head of the EMC Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland.
His research interests concern electromagnetic compatibility, lightning electromagnetics and electromagnetic field interactions with transmission lines.
Dr. Rachidi is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY and the President of the Swiss National Committee of the International Union of Radio Science.
He has received numerous awards including the 2005 IEEE EMC Technical Achievement Award, the 2005 CIGRE Technical Committee Award, the 2006 Blondel Medal from the French Association of Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Information Technology and Communication (SEE), the 2016 Berger Award from the International Conference on Lightning Protection, the 2016 Best Paper Award of the IEEE Transactions on EMC, and the 2017 Motohisa Kanda Award for the most cited paper of the IEEE Transactions on EMC (2012-2016).
In 2014, he was conferred the title of Honorary Professor of the Xi’an Jiaotong University in China.
He served as the Vice-Chair of the European COST Action on the Physics of Lightning Flash and its Effects from 2005 to 2009, the Chairman of the 2008 European Electromagnetics International Symposium, the President of the International Conference on Lightning Protection from 2008 to 2014, the Editor-in-Chief of the Open Atmospheric Science Journal (2010-2012) and the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ELECTROMAGNETIC COMPATIBILITY from 2013 to 2015. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of the SUMMA Foundation, and a member of the Swiss Academy of Sciences.
He is the author or coauthor of over 200 scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals and over 400 papers presented at international conferences.
Demetri PsaltisResearch group
Teaching & PhD PhD Students Victoria Fay, Colin Nikhil Christian Past EPFL PhD Students Wuzhou Song, Alexandre Goy, Julien Cuennet, Ioannis Papadopoulos, Xin Yang, Grégoire Pierre Jean Laporte, Thomas Jean Victor Marie Lanvin, Seyyed Mohammad Hosseini Hashemi, Nicolino Stasio, Morteza Hasani Shoreh, Marilisa Romito, Pooria Hadikhani, Eirini Kakkava, Joowon Lim, Giulia Panusa, Ahmed Bassam Sayed Ayoub Mohamed Ayoub, Amirhossein Saba, Niyazi Ulas Dinç Past EPFL PhD
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.
Ambrogio FasoliAmbrogio FASOLI was born on November 10, 1964, in Milano, Italy. After a classical high school diploma (Maturità Classica) and graduation from the University of Milano, with the degree of Dottore in Fisica, he obtained his Phd at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale (EPFL) with a thesis on chaos in wave-particle interactions in plasmas, which was awarded the Best EPFL Thesis prize, in 1993. He then moved to the JET Joint Undertaking, the largest worlds fusion device, near Oxford, UK, to investigate Alfvén waves and burning plasma physics. In 1995-1996 he took a sabbatical leave, visiting several Universities and Research Institutes in Europe and in the USA, including three months at General Atomics in San Diego. In 1996-1997, during a second period at JET, he participated in the fusion power worlds record experiments in Deuterium-Tritium plasmas at JET. In 1997 he was nominated Assistant Professor in MIT Physics Department, where he led a basic plasma physics group and the international collaboration between MIT and JET. In 2001 Ambrogio FASOLI was nominated Assistant Professor of Physics at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, and Professeur Boursier of the Swiss National Science Foundation. He became member of CRPP Directorate and took the leadership of CRPP basic plasma physics group and of the TCV tokamak, one of the major fusion experiments worldwide. At European level he was scientific coordinator for JET experiments, spokesperson for multi-machine experiments in the frame of International Tokamak Physics Activities, and Project Leader for a JET Enhancement project. In 2005 he became Associate Professor of Physics with tenure at EPFL, then member of EFDA Science and Technology Advisory Committee, and of the Steering Committee of the Association EURATOM-Swiss Confederation. From 2006 he was also Deputy Director, then from 2007 Executive Director of CRPP and from 2008 Full Professor of Physics at EPFL. For a number of years he was the Chair of the EPFL Physics Strategic Committee and a member of the Directorate of the EPFL School of Sciences. Since the summer of 2014 Professor FASOLI was the sole Director of CRPP. He now represents Switzerland in the EUROfusion General Assembly and Bureau, and in the Governing Board for Fusion for Energy. He is member of the EUROfusion DEMO project Board, of the Scientific Board of the Helmotz Virtual Institute on Advanced Microwave Diagnostics, of the European Delegation for the Cooperation between Euratom and the Government of India in Fusion Energy Research, of the European Consortium for the development of the ITER gyratron (EGYC), and participates to numerous international review panels. He chairs the FuseNet Academic Council, the International Advisory Panel for the Laboratory of Excellence Plas@Par in the Sorbonne Universities, the European Consortium for the construction of the ITER microwave Upper Launcher (ECHUL), and the Promotion Committee of the EPFL Faculty of Basic Sciences. He is one the three European representatives in the International Tokamak Physics Activities Coordinating Committee, advising ITER, and the Editor-in-Chief of the IAEA journal Nuclear Fusion. Since January 2019, Ambrogio Fasoli is the Chair of the General Assembly, i.e. the president of EUROfusion, the European Consortium for Development of Fusion Energy. Professor FASOLI is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and since 2001 a Visiting Professor at MIT Physics Department. He is the Director of the Swiss Plasma Center.
Paolo GermanoFORMATION
Mars 1990 : Engagement au Laboratoire d'électromécanique et de machines électriques (LEME), devenu entre temps le laboratoire d'actionneurs intégrés (LAI), comme assistant puis comme fonctionnaire scientifique.
Janvier 1990 : Diplôme d'ingénieur EPF en microtechnique.
Juillet 1985 : Maturité de type scientifique.
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- EXPERIENCES ET DOMAINES DE COMPETENCES
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Modélisation et simulation de l'alimentation des moteurs de l'avion Solar Impulse sur la base des résultats de la modélisation par éléments finis (FEM) de la structure magnétique Développement du banc de mesure (mécanique et software) du moteur Solar Impulse (dès mars 2004);
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Dans le cadre d'un Projet CTI en collaboration avec l'entreprise Medtronic (Projet ColoStim), développement d'un appareil de traitement de la constipation consistant en des électrodes implantées le long du colon et alimentées par induction, à haute fréquence, à l'aide d'une bobine primaire placée autour du thorax du patient (janvier 2006 - mars 2007);
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Développement du modèle équivalent d'une montre à glace tactile et analyse de l'effet des décharges électrostatiques sur cette montre. Projet CTI en collaboration avec l'entreprise ETA-Swatch Group (avril 2003 à octobre 2004);
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Développement d'un système de transfert d'énergie pour navettes automotrices de machines d'assemblage. Projet CTI en collaboration avec l'entreprise Montech AG (octobre 2001 à octobre 2002);
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Développement d'une installation de transfert d'énergie pour des wagonnets de transport de rouleaux pour l'industrie du papier avec l'entreprise Valmet AG (Groupe Metso Paper) (2001);
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Développement d'un banc de mesure pour actionneurs linéaires dans le cadre d'un mandat avec l'entreprise Sonceboz SA (mars 1998 - juillet 2000);
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Développement d'une installation de transfert d'énergie pour un convoyeur d'outils dans le cadre d'un mandat avec l'entreprise MCM SpA (Italie) (juillet 1998 avril 1999 et déc. 1999 avril 2000);
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Développement d'un banc de test pour vibreur électromécanique dans le cadre d'un mandat avec l'entreprise ASULAB SA à Marin (octobre décembre 1999);
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Développement et responsabilité d'une installation de démonstration d'un Système de transport automatique à transmission d'énergie par induction - Projet Serpentine 2 PSEL (déc. 1996 juin 1999);
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Développement d'un banc de mesure et d'analyse pour moteurs à courant continu dans le cadre d'un projet d'impulsion RAVEL (sept. 1995 - mars 1997);
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Développement d'un convertisseur de fréquence à résonance de 2,4 kW pour l'alimentation d'un transformateur sans fer dans le cadre du transfert d'énergie sans contacts Projet Serpentine PSEL (février 94 déc. 1995);
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Développement d'un banc de mesure pour moteurs pas à pas dans le cadre d'un mandat avec l'entreprise Sonceboz SA (mars 1992 nov. 1995);
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Développement d'un convertisseur direct de fréquence AC/AC de basse puissance dans le cadre du projet du cur artificiel Suisse (mars 1990 - mars 1992);
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Suivi d'une vingtaine de projets de semestre et de master EPFL;
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Divers projets de moindre envergure (alimentations, démonstrateurs, acquisitions de données, micro-informatique, circuits imprimés).
PUBLICATIONS
DOMAINE DU TRANSFERT D'ENERGIE PAR INDUCTION
M. Jufer, L. Cardoletti, B. Arnet, P. Germano, Ch. Koechli, N. Macabray, M. Perrottet, "Dispositif de transmission d'énergie électrique à un véhicule, sans contact, par induction - Projet PSEL N° 16 - Magnéto-glisseur", Rapport de synthèse 1995, EPFL-DE-LEME, Lausanne - Suisse, 18 octobre 1995;
M. Jufer, L. Cardoletti, P. Germano, B. Arnet, M. Perrottet, N. Macabrey, "Induction Contactless Energy Transmission System for an Electric Vehicle", ICEM96, International Conference on Electrical Machines, Vigo, Sept. 10-12, 1996, Vol II, pp. 343-347;
P. Germano, M. Jufer, "Contactless power transmission: Frequency tuning by a maximum power tracking method", EPE '97, 7th European Conference on power electronics and applications, Trondheim, Sept. 8-10, 1997, Vol IV, pp. 693-697;
M. Jufer, L. Cardoletti, P. Germano, B. Arnet, M. Perrottet, Swiss Federal Institute of Techno-logy, DE-LEME, 1015 Lausanne, Switzer-land, "Inductively powered automatic vehicles - Ser-pen-tine", EVS-15 '98, 15th International Electric Vehicle Symposium and Exhibition, Brussel, Belgium, Sept. 29 - Oct. 3, 1998, pp. 403-404;
P. Germano, Nicolas Macabrey, M. Jufer, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, DE-LEME, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, "Contactless Power Transmission: Linear Positioning of the Moving Element", EPE '99, 8th European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications, Lausanne, 7-9 September, 1999, Art Nb 685;
P. Germano, M. Jufer, L. Cardoletti, B. Arnet, Ch. Koechli, N. Macabray, M. Perrottet, "Système de transport automatique à transmission d'énergie par induction. - Projet PSEL N° 115", Rapport final 1999, EPFL-DE-LEME, Lausanne - Suisse, 31 août 1999;
P. Germano, I. Stefanini, W. Montella, L. Cardoletti, Y. Perriard, "Système de transfert d'énergie pour navette de machines d'assemblage Projet CTI n° 5780.1 KTS", Rapport final, EPF Lausanne-LAI, Suisse, mars 2004;
I. Stefanini, P. Germano, L. Cardoletti, W. Montella, Y. Perriard, "Inductive Charge System for Assembly Plant Shuttles", CD-ROM, EPE 2003, Toulouse, (France), 2-4 Septembre 2003;
P. Germano, I. Stefanini, Y. Perrirad, "Stimulation colique pour le traitement des troubles de la motilité Projet ColoStim Projet CTI n° 7362.2 LSPP-LS", Rapport final, EPF Lausanne-LAI, Suisse, mai 2007.
DOMAINES DES BANCS DE MESURE - MESURES
P. Germano, "Système automatique de mesure", Rapport technique vol. I & II, EPF-Lausanne, 1995;
P. Germano, Ch. Kuert, "Banc de mesures automatisé pour entraînements électriques", Présentation et mode d'emploi, EPF-Lausanne, 1997;
P. Germano, Ch. Kuert, M. Jufer, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, DE-LEME, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, "Automated test bench for electric drives: Modular layout of soft- and hardware", EPE '99, 8th European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications, Lausanne, 7-9 September, 1999, Art Nb 683;
Y. Perriard, P. Germano, I. Verettaz, "Banc de test pour vibreur électromécanique", Rapport technique, EPF-Lausanne, janvier 2000;
P. Germano, Ch. Kuert, M. Jufer, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, DE-LEME, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland, "DSP controlled automated Test Bench for linear Actuators Design and Choices", EPE 2001, 9th European Conference on Power Electronics and Applications, Graz, 27-29 August, 2001, Art Nb 709;
P. Germano, M. Crivii, D. Demarco, Y. Perriard, Swiss Federal Instutute of Technology, LAI, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland & L. Paratte, R. Marquis, Service Unit RD, ETA SA (Swatch Group), 2540 Granges, Switzerland, "Analysis and Modeling of Electrostatic Discharge in a Tactile Glass Featured Watch", IAS 2004, 39th Annual Meeting, Seattle, WA, USA, October 3-7, 2004;
P. Germano, M. Crivii, D. Demarco, Y. Perriard, Swiss Federal Instutute of Technology, LAI, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland & L. Paratte, R. Marquis, Service Unit RD, ETA SA (Swatch Group), 2540 Granges, Switzerland, "Analysis and Modeling of Electrostatic Discharge in a Tactile Glass Featured Watch", IEEE Transaction on Industry Applications, Volume 43, Issue 4, July-aug. 2007, Page(s): 1091-1098; Bruno Emanuel Ferreira De Sousa CorreiaThroughout my PhD and postdoctoral studies I was trained in world-renowned laboratories and institutions in the United States of America (University of Washington and The Scripps Research Institute). Very early in my scientific career I found out my fascination about protein structure and function. My PhD studies evolved in the direction of immunogen design and vaccine engineering which sparked my interest in the many needs and opportunities in vaccinology and translational research. My efforts resulted in an enlightening piece of work where for the first time, computationally designed immunogens elicited potent neutralizing antibodies. During my postdoctoral studies I joined a chemical biology laboratory at the Scripps Research Institute. In this stage I developed novel chemoproteomics methods for the identification of protein-small molecule interaction sites in complex proteomes. In March 2015, I joined the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) – Switzerland as a tenure track assistant professor. The focus of my research group is to develop computational tools for protein design with particular emphasis in applying these strategies to immunoengineering (e.g. vaccine and cancer immunotherapy). The activities in my laboratory focus on computational design methods development and experimental characterization of the designed proteins. Our laboratory has been awarded with 2 prestigious research grants from the European Research Council. Lastly, I have been awarded the prize for best teacher of Life sciences in 2019.
Yves MartinTeaching & PhD Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Francesco Piras, Jonathan Rossel Courses Fusion and industrial plasma technologies PHYS-632 The course provides an overview of the technologies that are essential for fusion developments and for industrial plasmaapplications, highlighting the synergies between the two fields. The aim is to provide a combined theoretical andexperimental background to the various topics.
Olivier SauterTeaching & PhD PhD Students Cassandre Ekta Contré, Antonia Frank, Peizheng Zhang, Jean-Pierre Thomas Svantner, Cristina Venturini, Cosmas Quirin Lorenz Heiss, Daniel Perales Rios, Viacheslav Bochkarev, Jan Jakub Frybes, Paul Véronique Guillaume Devianne Past EPFL PhD Students Clemente Angioni, Petri Nikkola, Alberto Bottino, Andrei Martynov, Emiliano Fable, Costanza Zucca, Federico Felici, Dávid Wágner, Doohyun Kim, Anna Teplukhina, Mengdi Kong, Francesco Carpanese, Simon Van Mulders, Stefano Marchioni, F
Stefano CodaTeaching & PhD PhD Students Vincent Masson, Luigi Persico, Ewout Koen L. Devlaminck, Martino Bonisolli, Alessandro Balestri, Mackenzie Peter-Fulford Van Rossem, James Winston Irawati Tumbokon, Salomon Guinchard, Inès Vergara, Michele Bottino Past EPFL PhD Students Alessandro Marinoni, Silvano Gnesin, Cornelis Adrianus de Meijere, Josef Kamleitner, Zhouji Huang, Himank Anand, Pedro Andres Molina Cabrera, Dahye Choi, Federico Pesamosca, Aylwin Iantchenko, Jean Arthur Cazabonne
Duccio TestaProfessionals experiences Supply teacher of mathematics, physics and computing 1994–1995 various high schools in Torino (Italy)
Teaching & PhD Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Theodoros Panis, Lorenzo Stipani Courses Sustainable energy innovation HUM-292 This course provides an introduction to the technical, social, and economic fundamentals of energy. The course examines the concrete case of nuclear fusion. How could this energy reshape our world? How can we ensure its acceptability, st
Marina PivettaTeaching & PhD PhD Students Serni Toda Cosi, Simon Vejs Kjeldgaard-Jensen Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Giulia Pacchioni, Jean-Guillaume De Groot, Sébastien Reynaud Courses Frontiers in nanosciences PHYS-407 The course covers relevant experimental and theoretical concepts in nanoscale science, from fundamental aspects like quantum tunneling and quantum size effects, to hot topics like quantum transport and nanoscale magnetism. Solid state physics PHYS-337 This lectur
Alan HowlingTeaching & PhD Past EPFL PhD Students Juliette Ballutaud Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Boris Legradic, Michaël Chesaux, Ralph Schnyder, Riccardo Agnello
Drazen DujicDrazen Dujic is an Associate Professor and Head of the Power Electronics Laboratory at EPFL. He received the Dipl.Ing. and MSc degrees from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia in 2002 and 2005, respectively, and the PhD degree from Liverpool John Moores University, UK in 2008. From 2003 to 2006, he was a Research Assistant with the Faculty of Technical Sciences at University of Novi Sad. From 2006 to 2009, he was a Research Associate with Liverpool John Moores University. After that he moved to industry and joined ABB Switzerland Ltd, where from 2009 to 2013, he was Scientist and then Principal Scientist with ABB Corporate Research Center in Baden-Dättwil, and from 2013 to 2014 he was R&D Platform Manager with ABB Medium Voltage Drives in Turgi. He joined EPFL in 2014 as Tenure Track Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2021. His research interests include the areas of design and control of advanced high power electronic systems and high-performance drives, predominantly for the medium voltage applications related to electrical energy generation, conversion and storage. He has authored or coauthored more than 150 scientific publications and has filed 16 patents. In 2018 he received EPE Outstanding Service Award from European Power Electronics and Drives Association and in 2014 the Isao Takahashi Power Electronics Award for Outstanding Achievement in Power Electronics. He is Senior Member of IEEE, and serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics and IET Electric Power Applications. He is Chairman of the Swiss IEEE Power Electronics Society (PELS) Chapter and IEEE PELS R8 Chair.
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.
Mengdi KongTeaching & PhD PhD Students Chizhou Wang, Lili Édes
