Julia SchmaleExpertise
atmospheric science, aerosol-cloud interactions, climate change in polar regions
Mission
Extreme environments are particularly sensitive to climate change and are transforming at accelerated rates. This can have important global repercussions. EERL aims to create integrated process understanding by investigating interactions between the atmosphere, cryosphere, biosphere, ocean, land and anthroposphere. The goal is to characterize climate-change relevant and vertically-resolved processes that are d
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.
Ian SmithPhD, Cambridge University, 1982 Interests 1 Active shape control for structures for deployment and where serviceability criteria governs 2 Biomimetic structures (learning, self-diagnosis, self-repair) 3 Infrastructure management support through structural identification 4 Advanced computer-aided engineering applications of stochastic optimization and search, multi-criteria analysis, system uncertainties (measurement and modelling), multi-modal approaches (combining statistics with behavior models) More details : see https://www.epfl.ch/labs/imac/research/iansmith/ Alexandros PapagiannisProf. Alex. Papayannis (Dipl. Ing., DEA, Ph.D.) is the Director of the Laboratory of Optoelectronics, Lasers and Applications (
http://www.physics.ntua.gr/~lola/pages/en.html
) and Professor of Atmospheric Physics, Laser Technology and Laser Remote Sensing at the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA). He received his DEA and Ph.D. Diplomas from the Université Paris 7, working at the Institut Pierre Simon Laplace (IPSL) du CNRS/Université Paris 6. He is affiliated to the Laboratory of Atmospheric Processes and their Impacts (LAPI) at EPFL.
He is a LiDAR expert (more than 35 years) in vertical profiling of atmospheric parameters, aerosols, bio-aerosols, clouds and gases (O3, H2O, glyoxal) in the troposphere, in combination with sun photometry, satellite data,
in situ
aerosol measurements and meteorological modelling. Being member of the 1st Tropospheric Ozone Network (TOR/TESLAS/EUREKA Projects) in Europe, he created, on 1996, the 1st European lidar Network (France, Switzerland, UK, Germany, Italy, Greece, Portugal). Soon after, he initiated the creation of several lidar groups in Greece, Brazil, Romania, China, etc., as well as of the RAYMETRICS lidar company (
www.raymetrics.com
), which is the first lidar company in the world with customers in throughout Europe, Americas, Asia and Africa. He is a founding member of the European lidar Network (EARLINET) (
www.earlinet.org
), which has been in operation since 2000. The NTUA lidar station serves as a calibration station of the CNES/NASA space lidar mission CALIPSO (
https://www-calipso.larc.nasa.gov/
) and the European Space Agency (ESA) space lidar mission AEOLUS (
https://www.esa.int/Applications/Observing_the_Earth/FutureEO/Aeolus/Introducing_Aeolus
).
His research focuses on the intercontinental transport of ozone, desert dust and biomass burning and continental aerosols and on their impact on clouds, climate, air quality and health. As his 1st Marie Curie ITN Grant (http://itars.uni-koeln.de/static/) combined the synergy of lidars, radars and micro-wave profiling systems to study of the aerosol-clouds interactions, his research is also focusing on the cloud formation processes based on such synergies. In recent years, his emphasis is also put on the typing and profiling of bio-aerosols using novel prototype lidar systems he designed and developed at NTUA.
He is member (2008-2015) and President (2015-2023) of the International Coordination Group for Laser Atmospheric Studies (ICLAS) (
http://iclas-ilrc.org/).
He has served as Co-chair and Member of the Scientific Committee of more than 26 International Conferences, related to lidar atmospheric/meteorological applications. He has participated in 67 research projects (EU, ESA, NASA, CNRS, INOE-Romania, IPEN-Brazil, and Greek national funds) and has published 132 papers in peer-reviewed journals, 6 Book chapters and 250 papers in peer-reviewed International Conferences Proceedings. He has received more than 8.100 citations (h-index 46) in Google Scholar. He has supervised more 15 Ph.D. students at NTUA and 60 M.Sc. Diploma Theses. 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
Aldo BrandiExpertise
Earth Sciences and GeographyUrban climate modeling and measurements
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
Wolf Hendrik HuwaldDr. Hendrik Huwald is a scientist at the Laboratory of Cryospheric Sciences (CRYOS) and a lecturer at the Environmental Sciences and Engineering Section (SSIE) of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He completed his PhD in 2003 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich (ETHZ), developing a numerical model for sea ice and studying energy transfer processes in the Arctic. Between 2005 and 2012 he was a post-doctoral fellow and scientist at the Laboratory of Environmental Fluid Mechanics and Hydrology (EFLUM) of EPFL working on Alpine snow-atmosphere interaction, and energy balance-related research mainly in mountain regions. During this time, he designed, led and participated in numerous large field experiments in different environments. In 2013 he joined the newly founded CRYOS laboratory where he conducted research in the domains of snow science, hydrology, boundary layer meteorology and environmental sensing. He has extensive experience with project management both on national and international level.
Georgia SotiropoulouExpertise
• Clouds: macro- & micro- physical, radiative, thermodynamic & dynamical processes • Remote sensing of clouds & thermodynamics • Boundary-layer processes • Atmospheric modeling (large-eddy, weather prediction & climate models)
Expertise
• Clouds: macro- & micro- physical, radiative, thermodynamic & dynamical processes • Remote sensing of clouds & thermodynamics • Boundary-layer processes • Atmospheric modeling (large-eddy, weather prediction & climate models)
Charlotte GrossiordTeaching & PhD PhD Students Maxwell Zachary Wallace Bergström, Julie Anne Botzas-Coluni, Cross Jacob Heintzelman, Léo César Bernard Jacquat, Céline Joanna Sijlmans Past EPFL PhD Students Eugénie Mas, Laura Mekarni, Janisse Deluigi, Thibaut Juillard Courses Applied ecology ENV-422 The course will provide the ecological systems knowledge needed to question applied sustainability solutions. We willcritically assess the complexity of current environmental issues, illustrating basic ecological
Athanasios NenesTeaching & PhD PhD Students Berkay Dönmez, Ernest Abboud Past EPFL PhD Students Paraskevi Georgakaki, Lucile Ricard Courses Atmospheric processes: from cloud to global scales ENV-407 The main objective is to present important atmospheric processes from the local to global scales. The course will start with cloud processes, continue to synoptic phenomena like extratropical cyclones and fronts, to finally cover numerical modeling at the regional and global scales. Introduction to environme
