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.
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.
Martin VetterliMartin Vetterli was appointed president of EPFL by the Federal Council following a selection process conducted by the ETH Board, which unanimously nominated him.
Professor Vetterli was born on 4 October 1957 in Solothurn and received his elementary and secondary education in Neuchâtel Canton. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich (ETHZ) in 1981, a Master’s of Science degree from Stanford University in 1982, and a PhD from EPFL in 1986. Professor Vetterli taught at Columbia University as an assistant and then associate professor. He was subsequently named full professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at the University of California at Berkeley before returning to EPFL as a full professor at the age of 38. He has also taught at ETHZ and Stanford University.
Professor Vetterli has earned numerous national and international awards for his research in electrical engineering, computer science and applied mathematics, including the National Latsis Prize in 1996. He is a fellow of both the Association for Computing Machinery and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and a member the US National Academy of Engineering. He has published over 170 articles and three reference works.
Professor Vetterli’s work on the theory of wavelets, which are used in signal processing, is considered to be of major importance by his peers, and his areas of expertise, including image and video compression and self-organized communication systems, are central to the development of new information technologies. As the founding director of the National Centre of Competence in Research on Mobile Information and Communication Systems, Professor Vetterli is a staunch advocate of transdisciplinary research.
Professor Vetterli knows EPFL inside and out. An EPFL graduate himself, he began been teaching at the school in 1995, was vice president for International Affairs and then Institutional Affairs from 2004 to 2011, and served as dean of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences in 2011 and 2012. In addition to his role as president of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation, a position he held from 2013 to 2016, he heads the EPFL’s Audiovisual Communications Laboratory (LCAV) since 1995.
Professor Vetterli has supported more than 60 students in Switzerland and the United States in their doctoral work and makes a point of following their highly successful careers, whether it is in the academic or business world.
He is the author of some 50 patents, some of which were the basis for start-ups coming out of his lab, such as Dartfish and Illusonic, while others were sold (e.g. Qualcomm) as successful examples of technology transfer. He actively encourages young researchers to market the results of their work.
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
Silvia CoccoloExpertise
Urban GreeningOutdoor Thermal Comfort Urban Energy Modelling
Teaching & PhD Courses Behind/Beyond future cities AR-496 We are living in an urban world and the design of sustainable cities is essential in order to decrease our energy footprint. This course provides the instruments to understand the complex urban metabolism, as well as the solutions for planning future smart and sustainable cities. Urban neighborhoods, infrastructures and sustainable development PENS-309
Benjamin Jérémy Laurent HeutteAwards Poster Prize Award Royal Society of Chemistry 2025 Best Poster Award - 2nd Prize Doctoral School of Civil and Environmental Engineering 2024
Paolo BenettinI was born in Padova, Italy, in 1986. After high school, I started the Environmental Engineering program at the University of Padova (Bachelor and Master), where I followed the 'soil protection' curriculum. During my Master studies I spent a semester as Erasmus student at Wageningen University (Wageningen, the Netherlands) to follow courses in Hydrology. After graduation, I decided to bring my education further and I started a Ph.D. at the civil and environmental engineering department at the University of Padova. My Ph.D. thesis focused on hydrologic transport and travel time distributions at the catchment scale. My contribution to the subject included both new theoretical formulations and extensive numerical applications to real catchments. During my Ph.D., I also spent 7 months as visiting research fellow at Virginia Tech University (Blacksburg, USA). Since I arrived at EPFL as post-doc in 2015, I started being involved in field and experimental activities, which allowed me to learn about practical experimental problems. In 2017 I had the opportunity to by hired by the ECHO laboratory as a permanent scientist, conducting research in the field of catchment hydrology.
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.
Antoine BosselutAntoine Bosselut is an assistant professor at EPFL. He leads the EPFL NLP group, which conducts research on natural language processing (NLP) systems that can model, represent, and reason about human and world knowledge.
Prior to joining EPFL, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University working in the
SNAP
and
NLP
groups and a young investigator on the
Mosaic
project at the
Allen Institute for AI
. He completed his PhD at the University of Washington.
Alain Michel PrenleloupTeaching & PhD Courses Mechanics of structures (For GM) ME-232 The student acquires the basics of stress analysis and deformation of linear elastic beams subjected to traction, shear, torsion, flexure; the influence coefficients an energy method to analyze statically determined and indetermined structures; rupture criteria.
