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.
Graham KnottGraham Knott received his degree in physiology from the University of Southampton, UK, in 1990, and his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Tasmania, Australia, in 1995. He moved to the University of Lausanne in Switzerland in 1999 where he researched the plasticity of neuronal connectivity in the adult brain, developing correlative light and electron microscopy methods for the analysis of in vivo imaged neurons. In 2006 Graham joined the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, establishing the Bio Electron Microscopy Facility and has continued his research interests in brain plasticity and 3D electron microscopy.
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
Sandro CarraraSandro Carrara is an IEEE Fellow for his outstanding record of accomplishments in the field of design of nanoscale biological CMOS sensors. He is also the recipient of the IEEE Sensors Council Technical Achievement Award in 2016 for his leadership in the emerging area of co-design in Bio/Nano/CMOS interfaces. He is a Professor of the EPFL in Lausanne (Switzerland), and head of the "Bio/CMOS Interfaces" (BCI) research group. He is former professor of optical and electrical biosensors at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Biophysics (DIBE) of the University of Genoa (Italy) and former professor of nanobiotechnology at the University of Bologna (Italy). He holds a PhD in Biochemistry & Biophysics from University of Padua (Italy), a Master degree in Physics from University of Genoa (Italy), and a diploma in Electronics from National Institute of Technology in Albenga (Italy). His scientific interests are on electrical phenomena of nano-bio-structured films, and include CMOS design of biochips based on proteins and DNA. Along his carrier, he published 7 books, one as author with Springer on Bio/CMOS interfaces and, more recently, a Handbook of Bioelectronics with Cambridge University Press. He has more than 250 scientific publications and is author of 13 patents. He is now Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Sensors Journal, the largest journal among 2019 IEEE publications; he is also founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal BioNanoScience by Springer, and Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems. He is a member of the IEEE Sensors Council and his Executive Committee. He was a member of the Board of Governors (BoG) of the IEEE Circuits And Systems Society (CASS). He has been appointed as IEEE Sensors Council Distinguished Lecturer for the years 2017-2019, and CASS Distinguished Lecturer for the years 2013-2014. His work received several international recognitions: several Top-25 Hottest-Articles (2004, 2005, 2008, 2009, and two times in 2012) published in highly ranked international journals such as Biosensors and Bioelectronics, Sensors and Actuators B, IEEE Sensors journal, and Thin Solid Films; a NATO Advanced Research Award in 1996 for the original contribution to the physics of single-electron conductivity in nano-particles; six Best Paper Awards at the IEEE Sensors Conference 2019 (Montreal) in 2019, Conferences IEEE NGCAS in 2017 (Genoa), MOBIHEALTH in 2016 (Milan), IEEE PRIME in 2015 (Glasgow), in 2010 (Berlin), and in 2009 (Cork); three Best Poster Awards at the EMBEC Conference in 2017 (Tampere, Finland), Nanotera workshop in 2011 (Bern), and NanoEurope Symposium in 2009 (Rapperswil). He also received the Best Referees Award from the journal Biosensor and Bioelectronics in 2006. From 1997 to 2000, he was a member of an international committee at the ELETTRA Synchrotron in Trieste. From 2000 to 2003, he was scientific leader of a National Research Program (PNR) in the filed of Nanobiotechnology. He was an internationally esteemed expert of the evaluation panel of the Academy of Finland in a research program for the years 2010-2013. He has been the General Chairman of the Conference IEEE BioCAS 2014, the premier worldwide international conference in the area of circuits and systems for biomedical applications
Andras Kis2015− Associate professor, EPFL, STI, Institute of Electrical Engineering (IEL) and Materials Science and Engineering Institute (IMX)
2008−2015 Tenure-track assistant professor at EPFL, School of Engineering (STI), Institute of Electrical Engineering (IEL)
2004−2007 Postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, Physics Department in the group of Prof. Zettl
2000−2003 PhD student at EPFL, Faculty of basic sciences, Institute of physics of complex matter, group of Prof. Forró
1994−1999 MS, Physics, University of Zagreb, Croatia
1994 Baccalaureate, MIOC (Mathematical and Informational Educational Center) high school
Luis Guillermo Villanueva TorrijoGuillermo Villanueva is a Tenure Track Assistant Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausane (EPFL), Switzerland, in the Mechanical Engineering Institute (IGM). Before joining EPFL he was a Marie Curie post-doctoral scholar at DTU (Denmark) and Caltech (California, US); and before a post-doc at EPFL-LMIS1. He received his M.Sc. in Physics in Zaragoza (Spain) and his PhD from the UAB in Barcelona (Spain).
Since the start of his PhD (2002), Prof. Villanueva has been active in the fields of NEMS/MEMS for sensing, having expertise from the design and fabrication to the characterization and applicability. He has co-authored more than 75 papers in peer-reviewed journals (h-index of 24 WoK, 32 GoS) and more than 100 contributions to international conferences.
He is serving, or has served, on the program committees of IEEE-NEMS, IEEE-Sensors, MNE, IEEE-FCS and Transducers. He is editor of Microelectronic Engineering. He has co-organized MNE2014 and SNC2015; and he is currently co-organizing the short courses at Transducers 2019 and the 16th International Workshop on Nanomechanical Sensors (NMC2019).
Dimitri Nestor Alice Van De VilleExpertise
Brain and spinal cord imaging, signal and image processing, network science, dynamic systems
Teaching & PhD PhD Students Alexandre Cionca, Chun Hei Michael Chan, Flavia Petruso, Bassam El Rawas, Nikolaos Molochidis, Christophe Pascal Jérémie Chênes, Fabrice Jean Guibert, Alessio Siviglia, Ekansh Sareen, Beatrice Lugli Past EPFL PhD Students Djano Kandaswamy, Fikret Isik Karahanoglu, Nora Leonardi, Zafer Dogan, Jeffrey Adam Kasten, Naghmeh Ghazaleh, Rotem Roza Kopel, Daniela Maria Zöller, Thomas
Oleg YazyevProf. Oleg Yazyev (Олег Язев) was born in Simferopol, Crimean peninsula. He obtained his degree in chemistry from Moscow State University in 2003. He then joined Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) completing his PhD thesis in chemistry and chemical engineering in 2007. Next two years he has spent as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP) and the Institute for Numerical Research in the Physics of Materials (IRRMA) of the same institution. In 2009-2011 he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Physics of the University of California, Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In September 2011 he started an independent research group supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation professorship grant. In 2012 he was awarded an ERC Starting grant. His current research focuses on theoretical and computational physics of two-dimensional and topological materials with strong emphasis on their prospective technological applications. ResearcherID profile of Oleg Yazyev Google Scholar profile of Oleg Yazyev