André SchiperAndré Schiper graduated in Physics from the ETHZ in Zurich in 1973 and received the PhD degree in Computer Science from EPFL in 1980. He has been a professor of computer science at EPFL since 1985, leading the Distributed Systems Laboratory. During the academic year 1992-1993 he was on sabbatical leave at the University of Cornell, Ithaca, New York (working with Ken Birman and Aleta Ricciardi), and in 2004-2005 at the Ecole Polytechnique in Palaiseau, France (working with Bernadette Charron-Bost). His research interests are in the area of dependable distributed systems, middleware support for dependable systems, replication techniques (including for database systems), group communication, distributed transactions, and MANETs (mobile ad-hoc networks).
Prof. Schiper is member of the editorial boards of
Distributed Computing (DC), Springer Verlag - ACM,
Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC), IEEE,
International Journal of Security and Networks (Inderscience).
Vincent KaufmannVincent Kaufmann is associate professor of urban sociology and mobility at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). Since 2011, he is also scientific director of the Mobile Lives Forum in Paris. After a master degree in sociology (Universtiy of Geneva) he did his Ph.D. at EPFL on rationalities underlying transport modal practices. Vincent Kaufmann has been invited lecturer at Lancaster University (2000-2001), Ecole des Ponts et Chaussées, Paris (2001-2002), Laval University, Québec (2008) Nimegen University (2010), Université de Toulouse Le Mirail (2011), Université Catholique de Louvain (2004-2018) and Tongji University in Shanghai (2018). There fields of research are: motility, mobility and urban life styles, links between social and spatial mobility, public policies of land planning and transportation. He recently published “Mobilité et libre circulation en Europe” (with Ander Audikana) Economica (2017).
Claudia Rebeca Binder SignerClaudia R. Binder, a Swiss, Canadian and Colombian citizen, was born in Montreal and spent most of her childhood in Switzerland and Colombia. She studied at ETH Zurich from 1985 to 1996, earning a degree in biochemistry and then a PhD in environmental sciences. After conducting her post-doctoral research at the University of Maryland in the US from 1996 to 1998, she returned to Switzerland and took a position as a senior research scientist at ETH Zurich, studying the interaction between human and environmental systems at the Institute for Natural and Social Science Interface. In 2006, Binder joined the University of Zurich as an assistant professor in the Department of Geography, and in 2009 moved to the University of Graz in Austria where she served as a full professor of systems science. In 2011, she took a position at the University of Munich’s Department of Geography as a full professor of human-environment relations.
Binder joined EPFL in March 2016 and set up the Laboratory for Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems (HERUS) at ENAC; she also holds the La Mobilière Chair on Urban Ecology and Sustainable Living.
Her research involves analyzing, modelling and assessing the transition of urban systems towards sustainability. She looks in particular at how we can better understand the dynamics of urban metabolism, what characterizes a sustainable city, and what drives and hinders transformation processes. She does so by combining knowledge from social, natural and data science. Her research focuses on food, energy, and sustainable living and transport in urban systems.
In Switzerland, Binder was appointed to the Research Council, Programs Division of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) in 2016 and serves on the Steering Committee of the SNSF’s National Research Program 71, “Managing Energy Consumption” and the Swiss Competence Centers for Energy Research (SCCER). She is also a member of the Steering Board on Sustainability Research for the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences. In 2019, she was elected as a member of the University Council of the University of Munich (LMU).
At EPFL, Binder is the academic director of Design Together, a cross-disciplinary teaching initiative. She was appointed to the management team of the Energy Center in 2018 and as head of the working group on EPFL’s energy and sustainability strategy in 2019.
Pierre DillenbourgA former teacher in elementary school, Pierre Dillenbourg graduated in educational science (University of Mons, Belgium). He started his research on learning technologies in 1984. In 1986, he has been on of the first in the world to apply machine learning to develop a self-improving teaching system. He obtained a PhD in computer science from the University of Lancaster (UK), in the domain of artificial intelligence applications for education. He has been assistant professor at the University of Geneva. He joined EPFL in 2002. He has been the director of Center for Research and Support on Learning and its Technologies, then academic director of Center for Digital Education, which implements the MOOC strategy of EPFL (over 2 million registrations). He is full professor in learning technologies in the School of Computer & Communication Sciences, where he is the head of the CHILI Lab: "Computer-Human Interaction for Learning & Instruction ». He is the director of the leading house DUAL-T, which develops technologies for dual vocational education systems (carpenters, florists,...). With EPFL colleagues, he launched in 2017 the Swiss EdTech Collider, an incubator with 80 start-ups in learning technologies. He (co-)-founded 4 start-ups, does consulting missions in the corporate world and joined the board of several companies or institutions. In 2018, he co-founded LEARN, the EPFL Center of Learning Sciences that brings together the local initiatives in educational innovation. He is a fellow of the International Society for Learning Sciences. He currently is the Associate Vice-President for Education at EPFL.
Denis GilletDenis Gillet received the Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) in 1988, and the Ph.D. degree in Information Systems also from the EPFL in 1995. During 1992 he was appointed as Research Fellow at the Information Systems Laboratory of Stanford University in the United States. He is currently Maître d'enseignement et de recherche at the EPFL School of Engineering, where he leads the React research group. His current research interests include Technologies Enhanced Learning (TEL), Human Computer Interaction (HCI), Human Devices Interaction (HDI) and Optimal Coordination of Complex and Distributed Systems. Denis Gillet is affiliated at EPFL with the Center for Intelligent Systems and the Center for Digital Education.
Gabriela Tejada GuerreroGabriela has extensive expertise in international cooperation in education, research and innovation. She joined EPFL as scientist at the Cooperation and Development Center (CODEV) where she led the EPFL Leading House Program (2014-2017) of the Swiss government, which upheld Swiss bilateral research cooperation with Brazil, India, Vietnam and Latin America. Her research focused on scientific diasporas and skilled migration with diverse international collaborations under her leadership. She worked at the University of Zurich, and the UNDP in Moldova and Geneva, and taught at the Monterrey Institute of Technology (ITESM). She was visiting researcher at the CES at Harvard University and the CIS at ETH Zurich. Gabriela obtained a BA in International Relations from the UIA (Ibero) in Mexico, and a PhD in Political Sciences from the UAB in Barcelona. She obtained a CAS IPA - International Policy and Advocacy of the D-MTEC, ETH Zurich (2019). Since 2020 Gabriela is Vice-President of the Swiss Commission for UNESCO (member since 2016), where she promotes science-society linkages and advocates for an inclusive development and dialogue through education, science and culture.Since May 2019, Gabriela is Academic Deputy at the Direction of the College of Humanities (CDH). She serves the Scholars at Risk program (SAR) at EPFL in an advisory capacity.
Roland John TormeyI am a sociologist and learning scientist researching and teaching on engineering education. I'm particularly focused on the roles of emotion and self-regulation in engineering teaching and learning. My profile is accessible here.
Simon François Dumas PrimbaultSimon holds a PhD in the history of science from the joint programme of the European University Institute (EUI, Florence) and the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS, Paris). His doctoral dissertation focused on the drafts and working papers belonging to two natural philosophers of the second half of the 17th century – Galileo’s last disciple Vincenzio Viviani in Florence and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz in Hannover – and could be described as a work of historical anthropology of knowledge.
By addressing the ink-and-paper materiality of these supposedly purely intellectual operations that scatter the mechanical and physico-mathematical papers of Viviani and Leibniz, he aims at seizing knowledge and scholars in statu nascendi. Studying closely down to the most subtle details of the activity of the scholars’ hands on the paper of their notes, and with the support of anthropology, history of art, literature, or history of emotions, Simon hopes to flesh out anew a historical epistemology too conceptual and positivist still.
Francesco MondadaDr. Mondada received his M.Sc. in micro-engineering in 1991 and his Doctoral degree in 1997 at EPFL. During his thesis he co-founded the company K-Team, being both CEO and president of the company for about 5 years. He is one of the three main developers of the Khepera robot, considered as a standard in bio-inspired robotics and used by more than 1,000 universities and research centers worldwide. Fully back in research in 2000 and after a short period at CALTECH, he participated to the SWARM-BOTS project as the main developer of the s-bot robot platform, which was ranked on position 39 in the list of The 50 Best Robots Ever (fiction or real) by the Wired Journal in 2006. The SWARM-BOTS project was selected as FET-IST success story by the EU commission. He is author of more than 100 papers in the field of bio-inspired robotics and system level robot design. He is co-editor of several international conference proceedings. In November 2005 he received the EPFL Latsis University prize for his contributions to bio-inspired robotics. In 2011 he received the "Crédit Suisse Award for Best Teaching" from EPFL and in 2012 the "polysphère" award from the students as best teacher in the school of engineering. His interests include the development of innovative mechatronic solutions for mobile and modular robots, the creation of know-how for future embedded applications, and making robot platforms more accessible for education, research, and industrial development.
Jacques LévyJacques Lévy (1952-) is a geographer and an urbanist, full professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL). He is the director of Chôros Laboratory and the director of the Architecture and Sciences of the City doctoral programme.
Topics
His major concerns are social theory of space, urbanity, globalisation, cartography, and the epistemology of social sciences. He has completed numerous research projects, including theoretical reflections, field studies on metropolises worldwide, and practical urban and territorial projects. He is working on the introduction of non-verbal, namely audio-visual languages, in all dimensions of academic research. He has been the director of a scientific film, Urbanity/ies (2013)
Positions and Activities
Formerly, he has been researcher at the French CNRS, then professor at the Paris Institut détudes politique (Sciences Po, F) and at Rheims University (F). He has been invited professor in various universities: UCLA, NYU, USP (São Paulo), LOrientale (Naples), Macquarie (Sydney), and the Reclus Chair in Mexico City. He has been a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (2003-2004). He has been invited as a keynote speaker in many congresses and conferences throughout the World.
He is the co-editor of EspacesTemps.net, a bilingual free-access journal of social sciences. He is the co-director of Lespace en société book series at PPUR/EPFL Press publisher. He is the scientific adviser of Pouvoirs Locaux journal. He is member of the international Grand Prix de lUrbanisme (Paris). He has numerous collaborations with newspapers and radio channels in France and Switzerland.
Publications
He has published in French, English, Italian, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian and Hungarian. Among his 600 publications, the following ones can be particularly noted: Révolutions, fin et suite (with Patrick Garcia & Marie-Flore Mattei, EspacesTemps/Centre Georges Pompidou, 1991);
Géographies du politique (ed., Presses de Sciences Po/EspacesTemps, 1991); Le monde : espaces et systèmes (with Marie-Françoise Durand & Denis Retaillé, Presses de Sciences Po/Dalloz, 1992 ; 2nd edition 1993), Lespace légitime (Presses de la FNSP, 1994); Egogéographies (LHarmattan, 1995); Le monde pour Cité (Hachette, 1996); Nouvelles géographies (Le Débat journal, special issue Nov. 1996); Europe : une géographie (Hachette, 1997 ; new edition 2011); Mondialisation : les mots et les choses (with the Mondialisation group, Karthala, 1999); Le tournant géographique (Belin, 1999); Logiques de lespace, esprit des lieux (Belin, 2000, co-ed. Michel Lussault); Repenser le territoire : un dictionnaire critique (LAube, 2000, with Serge Wachter et al.); From Geopolitics to Global Politics (ed., Frank Cass, Londres, 2001); Dictionnaire de la géographie et de lespace des sociétés (Belin, 2003, co-ed. with Michel Lussault); La carte, enjeu contemporain (La Documentation Photographique, 2004, with Patrick Poncet & Emmanuelle Tricoire); Les sens du mouvement (Belin, 2005, co-ed. with Sylvain Allemand & François Ascher); Eine geographische Wende » (Geographische Zeitschrift journal, special issue, 2005); Penser lespace pour lire la vieillesse (PUF, 2006, with Pierre Brunel, Claudine Attias-Donfut, & Jean Morval); Milton Santos, philosophe du mondial, citoyen du local (PPUR, 2007);
Linvention du Monde (ed., Presses de Sciences Po, 2008); The City (Ashgate, 2008); Échelles de lhabiter (ed., PUCA, 2008); Our Inhabited Space (ed., FNRS, 2009); Le sfide cartografiche (co-ed with Emanuela Casti, Il Lavoro Editoriale, 2010); Globalization of Urbanity (dir., avec Josep Acebillo et Chrisitan Schmid, iCUP, 2013); Réinventer la France (Fayard, 2013); Mondialisation : consommateur ou acteur ? (avec Jacques Cossart et Lucas Léger, Le Muscadier, 2013).
Juan Carlos FarahJuan Carlos Farah received his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Harvard University, completed studies in Computer Science at Stanford University, and a Master of Science in Computing at Imperial College London. Since 2017, Juan Carlos has worked as a researcher and software engineer at the Interaction Systems Group (REACT) of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). He is the technical lead for the Graasp Ecosystem, a suite of native and web applications that support digital education activities and are the core technology behind the Horizon 2020 Next-Lab and GO-GA European Innovation Action Projects. As a part of these projects, Juan Carlos conducted research on privacy-preserving systems for technology-enhanced learning. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Robotics and Intelligent Systems at EPFL, focusing on human-computer interaction and the perception of anthropomorphic traits in intelligent conversational agents. As part of his teaching duties, he gives a yearly lecture on trust, privacy and reputation frameworks for social media platforms.
