Katia VillionExpertise
Microbiology, Molecular Biology
Mission
Lab management, Safety Delegate, Experimental support, Training of new members and trainees, Communications
Education Master's degree | Microbiology 2018 – 2020 Aix-Marseille Université Bachelor's degree | Cell Biology 2017 – 2018 Aix-Marseille Université Lab technician Diploma (BTS - Brevet de Technicien Supérieur) | Biotechnologies 2015 – 2017 Académie Aix-Marseille Professionals experiences
Francesco PalumboEducation Ph.D - The role of the Foxo transcription factors in normal and aberrant late lung development | 2015 – 2022 Justus Liebig University Giessen - Max Plank Institute for Heard and Lung Research Master’s Degree in Cell and Molecular Biology - Metformin and nutrient availability modulate the mTOR pathway in human adenocarcinoma | 2011 – 2015 University of Rome "Tor Vergata"
Camille Véronique Bernadette GoemansCamille's research focuses on understanding how antibiotics and non-antibiotic drugs affect the diverse bacteria from the human gut microbiota and how they contribute to dysbiosis and the development of antibiotic resistance. To achieve this goal, she combines systems approaches with molecular microbiology, bacterial genetics and biochemistry.She obtained her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Biomedical Sciences from the UCLouvain, Belgium, after which she completed her PhD (FRIA national fellowship) at th
Juan Cruz Landoni MartinExpertise
Mitochondria, metabolism, mitochondrial DNA, superresolution microscopy, ageing
Mission
Dissecting the dynamic orchestration between mitochondria and metabolism underlying health, disease and ageing using advanced imaging and integrative multi-omics.
Current Work
I am a chemist turned mitochondria enthusiast. Using molecular biology, super-resolution microscopy and smart imaging techniques, I aim to decipher the complex behaviour of the tiny intruders that live inside our cells, mitochondria, and
Romain ZuffereyTeaching & PhD Courses Biology for engineers MSE-212 This course consists of an introduction to biology and more particularly to biology as a multidisciplinary field, emphasizing natural examples of materials engineering. It should therefore allow engineering students to find inspiration from biology in future materials research problems. Cellular biology and biochemistry for engineers BIO-105 Basic course in biochemistry as well as cellular and molecular biology for non-life
Mykhailo BatiukExpertise
Single cell and spatial genomics (wet/dry lab), glia, psychiatry, neuroscience
I obtained my PhD (2012-2018) in KU Leuven/VIB, Belgium where I investigated astrocyte heterogeneity using single cell transcriptomics. During this period I developed tools to acutely and specifically isolate astrocytes from adult brain and identified five astrocyte subtypes in the cortex and hippocampus of mouse brain expanding previous understanding of astrocyte variability.Following my PhD, I did my first post-doc in
Satyam TiwariExpertise
Protein biophysics, Protein Engineering, Chaperone biology, Protein folding, Protein misfolding diseases , Statistical Data Analysis, Cell molecular biolgy
Mission
I employ biophysics and protein biochemistry to address and comprehend protein misfolding and aggregation. The goal is to design molecular chaperone-based disaggregases (protein drugs, biotherapeutics) targeted at disease-specific protein aggregates. I am currently investigating TDP-43 misfolding and amyloid formation (this protein aggr
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.
Suliana ManleyFrom 2016 Associate professor, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
2009-2016 Tenure-track assistant professor, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland
2006-2009 Post-Doctoral fellow, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA
2004-2006 Post-Doctoral fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
1999-2004 PhD (Physics) Awarded 06/2004, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA
1993-1997 Bachelors (Cum Laude) Physics & Mathematics, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA
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.
Alessandro BarducciTeaching & PhD Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Salvatore Assenza, Duccio Malinverni
Stewart ColeProfessor Stewart Cole is an international authority in bacterial molecular-genetics and genomics. He has made outstanding contributions in several fields including: bacterial anaerobic electron transport; genome analysis of retroviruses and papillomaviruses; antibiotic resistance mechanisms; and the molecular microbiology of toxigenic clostridia. His studies on isoniazid and multidrug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis, together with his pioneering work on the pathogenicity, evolution and genomics of the tubercle and leprosy bacilli, have made him an undisputed leader in the field of mycobacterial research. The findings of his research are of direct relevance to public health and disease-control in both the developing world and the industrialised nations. He has published over 250 scientific papers and review articles, and holds many patents.
Edoardo CharbonEdoardo Charbon (SM’00 F’17) received the Elektrotechnik Diploma from ETH Zurich, the M.S. from the University of California at San Diego, and the Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1988, 1991, and 1995, respectively, all in electrical engineering and EECS. He has consulted with numerous organizations, including Bosch, X-Fab, Texas Instruments, Maxim, Sony, Agilent, and the Carlyle Group. He was with Cadence Design Systems from 1995 to 2000, where he was the architect of the company's initiative on information hiding for intellectual property protection. In 2000, he joined Canesta Inc., as the Chief Architect, where he led the development of wireless 3-D CMOS image sensors. Since 2002 he has been a member of the faculty of EPFL, where is a full professor since 2015. From 2008 to 2016 he was full professor and chair at the Delft University of Technology, where he spearheaded the university's effort on cryogenic electronics for quantum computing as part of QuTech. He has been the driving force behind the creation of deep-submicron CMOS SPAD technology, which is mass-produced since 2015 and is present in smartphones, telemeters, proximity sensors, and medical diagnostics tools. His interests span from 3-D vision, LiDAR, FLIM, FCS, NIROT to super-resolution microscopy, time-resolved Raman spectroscopy, and cryo-CMOS circuits and systems for quantum computing. He has authored or co-authored over 400 papers and two books, and he holds 23 patents. Dr. Charbon is a distinguished visiting scholar of the W. M. Keck Institute for Space at Caltech, a fellow of the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience Delft, a distinguished lecturer of the IEEE Photonics Society, and a fellow of the IEEE.
Pierre-Etienne BourbanBackground 1990 Ingénieur en science des matériaux 1993 PhD in materials science Activities 1993-1994 Research at the Center for Composite Materials, University of Delaware, USA (ccm.udel.edu), SNSF grant Since 1994 Research and teaching at EPFL, Composites, (LTC, LPAC) 1995-1999 Coordination Swiss Priority Program on Materials research: 2.2: Composites Since 1998 Biocomposites 2004-2009 Direction of the EPFL Transdisciplinary programme in Sport and Rehabilitation 2005-2008 Member of the EPFL Vice-Presidency for Innovation and Valorisation and direction a.i.EPFL-LTC Since 2016 Direction Discovery Learning Labs Materials/Bioengineering and Engineering
Luciano Andres AbriataExpertise
Protein NMRNMR of paramagnetic systemsMetalloproteinsBiomolecular SpectroscopyStructural BiologyStructural BioinformaticsMolecular Modeling
ResearchPapers Link to Google Scholar
Teaching & PhD Courses Basic and advanced NMR - Level 1 A (EPFL) CH-601(x) Basic theoretical and experimental aspects of NMR will be taught. Students will be familarized with modern NMR spectrometers. Basic and advanced NMR - Level 2 (EPFL) CH-703 The goal is to give a sound theoretical an
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
Fides ZenkTeaching & PhD PhD Students Hanrong Hu, Eugenio Stefano Gentile, Ece Naz Bilgiç, Nahuel Jonas Simonet, Yong-Qi Gao, Tekin Can Sobaci, Angel Lizandro Polanco Maldonado Courses Neuroscience foundations for engineers BIOENG-310 This overview course bridges computational expertise with neuroscience fundamentals, aimed at fosteringinterdisciplinary communication and collaboration for engineering-based neuroscience programs. Practical - Zenk Lab BIO-625 You will learn to prepare
