Klaus KernKlaus Kern is Professor of Physics at EPFL and Director and Scientific Member at the Max-Planck-Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, Germany. He also is Honorary Professor at the University of Konstanz, Germany. His present research interests are in nanoscale science, quantum technology and in microscopy at the atomic limits of space and time. He holds a chemistry degree and PhD from the University of Bonn and a honorary doctors degree from the University of Aalborg. After his doctoral studies he was staff scientist at the Research Center Jülich and visiting scientist at Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill before joining the Faculty of EPFL in 1991 and the Max-Planck-Society in 1998. Professor Kern has authored and coauthored close to 700 scientific publications, which have received nearly 60‘000 citations. He has served frequently on advisory committees to universities, professional societies and institutions and has received numerous scientific awards and honors, including the 2008 Gottfried-Wilhelm-Leibniz Prize and the 2016 Van‘t Hoff Prize. Prof. Kern has also educated a large number of leading scientists in nanoscale physics and chemistry. During the past twenty-five years he has supervised one hundred PhD students and sixty postdoctoral fellows. Today, more than fifty of his former students and postdocs hold prominent faculty positions at Universities around the world.
Giorgio MargaritondoCitizen of the USA and Switzerland, Giorgio Margaritondo was born in Rome, Italy, in 1946. He received the Laurea summa cum laude from the University of Rome in 1969. From 1969 he was an employee of the Italian National Research Council in Rome and Frascati and, in 1975-77, he was at Bell Laboratories in the USA. From 1978 to 1990, he was professor of physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in the USA; in 1984 he was nominated associate director for research of the Synchrotron Radiation Center of the same university. In 1990 he was nominated "professeur ordinaire" (full professor) at the EPFL; he directed the Institute of Applied Physics and the Physics Department. He was also a honorary faculty member at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. In 2001 he became Dean of the EPFL Faculty of Basic Sciences. In 2004 he was nominated Provost and he served until 2010, when he became Dean of Continuing Education, until his retirement from the EPFL in 2016 In addition to teaching general physics, his activity concerns the physics of semiconductors and superconductors (electronic states, surfaces and interfaces) and of biological systems; his main experimental techniques are electron spectroscopy and spectromicroscopy, x-ray imaging and scanning near-field microscopy, including experiments with synchrotron light and with free electron lasers. Author of more than 700 scientific publications and 9 books, he was also coordinator in 1995-98 of the scientific division of the Elettra synchrotron in Trieste. In 1997-2003 he was coordinator of the European Commission Round Table on synchrotron radiation, and then became president of the Council of the European Commission Integrated Initiative on Synchrotron and Free Electron Laser Science (IA-SFS and then ELISA), the largest network in the world in this domain. In 2011-15, he was Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Physics D (Applied Physics). He is currently vice-president of the council of the Università della Svizzera Italiana (USI), and president of the Scientific and Technological Committee of the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT). He is Fellow of the American Physical Society and of the American Vacuum Society and Fellow and Chartered Physicist of the Institute of Physics.
Pramod RastogiHe received his MSc degree from the University of Lucknow, MTech degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, and doctorate degree from the University of Franche Comté in France. His research activities are principally in the area of holographic interferometry, speckle metrology, fiber optics sensors, phase shifting and moiré. He is the author or coauthor of more than 175 scientific papers of which more than 140 are published in peer-reviewed archival journals. He is also the author of book chapters, Encyclopaedia articles, and has edited several books in the field of optical metrology. His guest-edited three special sections on Optics in Switzerland for Optical Engineering in 1995 are even today an invaluable source of reference relative to optical engineering activities in Switzerland both at the academic and industrial levels. He has guest-edited over a dozen special dedicated issues in archival journals. He has also chaired and organized several international symposiums, such as, the International Conference on Applied Optical Metrology, Balatonfüred, Hungary, June 8-11, 1998; or the Conference on Trends in Optical Non-destructive Testing, Lugano, Switzerland, May 2-5, 2000, or the Conference on Advanced Phase Measurement Methods in Optics and Imaging, Monte Verita, Ascona, Switzerland, May 16-21, 2010 etc. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (1993) and a Fellow of the Society of the Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (1995). He is also a recipient of the Hetényi Award for the most significant research paper published in Experimental Mechanics in the year 1982.He was Elected as a Member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences (SATW) in 2014. He was recipient of the SPIE Dennis Gabor Award, 2014. The Dennis Gabor award is presented annually in recognition of outstanding accomplishments in diffractive wave front technologies, especially those which further the development of holography and metrology applications. He was an honorary visiting Professor at the IIT Delhi between 1999 & 2003. Since 2000 he has also been active in laying groundwork for collaboration with the Indian Institutes of science and technology. Between the years 2000 & 2004, he was doing this as a part of his broader activity as in-charge of relations with Asia. His initiatives have led to academic exchange programs involving faculty and students with a view to fostering networking, research linkages and partnerships. To cite a few of his many initiatives: his active contribution to the holding of a high level Indo Swiss Workshop on Science & Technology at Bangalore in 2003; the setting up of ISJRP - the pilot project on bilateral partnership in S&T between Switzerland and India - in 2004; developing ISBRI (Indo-Swiss bilateral research initiative) in 2006; etc. He remained as the main coordinator of the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Program between the period covering the program's inception in 2004 until February 2011. He is currently responsible for developing academic and institutional relations with the universities in India and South-East Asian countries. He has been instrumental in helping to open up a range of opportunities to the EPFL students, such as, doing their "mobility" years at one of the IITs or, their final year major projects or internships at one of the Indian institutions/companies. Over a hundred EPFL students have benefited from these programs. He was instrumental in establishing Internship program with the aim of promoting an awareness of EPFL among the IIT students. This program has become very popular among the IIT and IIITA students with several hundreds of them having benefited from this program. He played a key role in the setting up of the EPFL-IIT Madras joint postgraduate course on "Technology and sustainable development" in 2000-01. He was the co-director of the last edition of the course which was held between January and April, 2008.
Philippe BuffatBorn in Lausanne (Switzerland) in 1942. EPUL physics engineer diploma in 1967 and EPFL PhD in physics in 1976. From 1966 he studies at the Experimental Physics Laboratory (Prof. J.P. Borel) the physical properties peculiar to the very small size metal crystals and gets a PhD degree for his thesis "Abaissement de la température de fusion de petits cristaux d'or par effet de taille thermodynamique" (Lowering of the melting temperature of small gold crystals by thermodynamic size effect). In 1971, he starts to develop an electron microscopy facility available to all EPFL students and researchers (nowadays Centre Interdisciplinaire de Microscopie Electronique CIME) that he manages till 2007. In parallel he teaches the principles of electron microscopy and the Experimental methods of physics at the Physics/Basic Sciences School (SB). In addition, he trains a large part of the facility users. Honorary professor BS/EPFL he carries-out a free-lance research at CIME and in collaboration with the Institute of Crystallography of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ICRAS, Moscow) and the International Centre of Electron Microscopy for Material Science (IC-EM AGH Krakow) This activity covers all the techniques related to transmission and scanning electron microscopy applied to materials science and solid-state physics. His interest is directed towards the structure of nanocrystals, their size effects and behavior under strong electron irradiation, the phase transitions in perovskites, the characterization of nanophases, multilayer and interface structures of crystalline materials and bioceramics. More recently a large research part has moved to understanding/pointing-out the adequacy between the limits of the instruments and their interpretation means in regard of their use in a multiusers facility with a large turnover and a wide range of materials/structures. He is past-president (2006-2007) of the Société Française des Microscopies (Sfµ), honorary member of the Sfµ and of the Swiss Society of Optics and Microscopy (SSOM).
Hans Peter HerzigDr. Hans Peter Herzig is Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Past President of the European Optical Society (EOS). His current research interests include refractive and diffractive micro-optics, nano-scale optics and optical MEMS.
Hans Peter Herzig received his diploma in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich, Switzerland, in 1978. From 1978 to 1982 he was a scientist with the Optics Development Department of Kern in Aarau, Switzerland, working in lens design and optical testing. In 1983, he became a graduate research assistant with the Applied Optics Group at the Institute of Microtechnology of the University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, working in the field of holographic optical elements. In 1987, he received his PhD degree in optics. From 1989 to 2001 he was head of the micro-optics research group in Neuchâtel. From 2002 to 2008 he was a full professor and head of the Applied Optics Laboratory at the University of Neuchâtel. Professor Herzig joined the faculty at EPFL in January 2009.
He is member of OSA, IEEE Photonics Society and Fellow of EOS. 2009-2010 he was President of the European Optical Society (EOS), 2001-2009 Vice-President of the Swiss Society of Optics and Microscopy and 2012-2014 Vice-President of ICO. Dr. Herzig is in the editorial board of different scientific journals (JM3, Optical Review, JEOS). He served as Conference Chairman for international conferences of EOS, IEE, IEEE/LEOS, OSA and SPIE; and as Guest Editor of three special issues of IEEE, OSA journals. He is editor of a well-known book on micro-optics (published in English and Chinese), author of 14 book chapters, over 150 peer reviewed articles and 300 conference proceedings.
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
Michele CeriottiMichele Ceriotti received his Ph.D. in Physics from ETH Zürich in 2010. He spent three years in Oxford as a Junior Research Fellow at Merton College. Since 2013 he leads the laboratory for Computational Science and Modeling in the Institute of Materials at EPFL. His research revolves around the atomic-scale modelling of materials, based on the sampling of quantum and thermal fluctuations and on the use of machine learning to predict and rationalize structure-property relations. He has been awarded the IBM Research Forschungspreis in 2010, the Volker Heine Young Investigator Award in 2013, an ERC Starting Grant in 2016, and the IUPAP C10 Young Scientist Prize in 2018.
Alfredo PasquarelloAlfredo Pasquarello studied physics at the
Scuola Normale Superiore
of Pisa and at the University of Pisa, obtaining their respective degrees in 1986. He obtained a doctoral degree at the EPFL in 1991 with a thesis on
Multiphoton Transitions in Solids
. Then, he moved to Bell Laboratories at Murray Hill (New Jersey), where he carried out postdoctoral research on the magnetic properties of carbon fullerenes. In 1993, he joined the Institute for Numerical Research in the Physics of Materials (IRRMA), where his activity involved first-principles simulation methods. In 1998, he was awarded the EPFL Latsis Prize for his research work on disordered silica materials. Succeeding in grant programs of the Swiss National Science Foundation, he then set up his own research group at IRRMA. In July 2003, he is appointed Professor in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics at EPFL. Currently, he leads the Chair of Atomic Scale Simulation.
John Christopher PlummerÉCOLE POLYTECHNIQUE FÉDÉRALE DE LAUSANNE (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland 1989-
Collaborateur Scientifique/Chargé de Cours (Lecturer) (1998-)
Privat Docent (1998)
Laboratoire de Technologie des Composites et Polymères (LTC) (2000-)
Laboratoire de Polymères (LP) (1998-2000)
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN (UMICH), Ann Arbor, MI, USA 1995-1996
Visiting Scientist, Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE)
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, Cambridge, UK 1986-1989
Research Assistant, Physics and Chemistry of Solids Group (PCS), Department of Physics
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, Cambridge, UK, Department of Materials 1986
PhD, "Flux Pinning in Type-II Superconductors"
UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE, Cambridge, UK, 1982
BA/MA Honours Degree in Natural Sciences
Awards
Prix R&R Haenny, 2007, DuPont Research Award, 2003, Commendation, British Polymer Group, Reading 1989
RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Ramier J, Da Costa N, Plummer CJG, Leterrier Y, Manson JAE, Eckert R, Gaudiana R, Cohesion and adhesion of nanoporous TiO2 coatings on titanium wires for photovoltaic applications, Thin solid films, 516, 1913 (2008).
Ramier J, Plummer CJG, Leterrier Y, Manson JAE, Eckert B, Gaudiana R, Mechanical integrity of dye-sensitized photovoltaic fibers, Renewable energy, 33, 314 (2008).
- Houphouet-Boigny C, Plummer CJG, Wakeman MD, Manson JAE, Hybrid glass fiber-reinforced thermoplastic nanocomposites, J. Thermoplast. Comp. Mater., 21, 103 (2008).
Ternat C, Ouali L, Sommer H, Fieber W, Velazco MI, Plummer CJG, Kreutzer G, Klok HA, Manson JAE, Herrmann, Investigation of the Release of Bioactive Volatiles from Amphiphilic Multiarm Star-Block Copolymers by Thermogravimetry and Dynamic Headspace Analysis, Macromolecules 41(19), 7079 (2008).
Ruggerone, R., Plummer, C.J.G., Negrete Herrera, N., Bourgeat-Lami, E., Månson, J-EA, Mechanical properties of highly filled latex-based polystyrene/laponite nanocomposites, Solid State Phenomena Vol. 151, 30 (2009).
Plummer, CJG, Dalle Vacche, S, Houphouët-Boigny, C, Michaud, V, Månson, JAE, Hybrid Glass Mat Reinforced Polypropylene-Montmorillonite Nanocomposites, Solid State Phenomena Vol. 151, 60 (2009).
Ruggerone, R., Plummer, C.J.G., Negrete Herrera, N., Bourgeat-Lami, E., Månson, J-EA, Highly filled polystyrenelaponite nanocomposites prepared by emulsion polymerization, European Polm. J. 45, 621 (2009).
Ruggerone, R., Plummer, C.J.G., Negrete Herrera, N., Bourgeat-Lami, E., Månson, J-EA, Fracture mechanisms in polystyrene/laponite nanocomposites prepared by emulsion polymerization, Engineering Fracture Mechanics 76, 2846 (2009)
Clausen P., Andreoni W., Curioni A., Hughs E., Plummer C.J.G. Adsorption of low-molecular-weight molecules on the surface of a sodium smectite clay: an ab initio study, Journal of Physical Chemistry C 113, 12293 (2009).
Clausen P., Andreoni W., Curioni A., Hughs E., Plummer C.J.G., Water adsorption on a sodium smectite clay surface: an ab initio study, Journal of Physical Chemistry C 113, 15218 (2009).
Molberg, M, Leterrier, Y., Plummer, C.J.G., Walder, C., Löwe, C., Opris, D.M., Nüesch, F.A., Bauer, S., Månson, J.-A.E., Frequency dependent dielectric and mechanical behaviour of elastomers for actuator applications, J. Appl. Phys. 106, 054112 (2009)
Clausen P., Signorelli M., Schreiber A., Hughes E., Plummer CJG, Fessas D., Schiraldi A., Månson E. J.-A., Equilibrium desorption isotherms of water, ethanol, ethyl acetate and toluene on a sodium smectite clay, Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry 98, 833 (2009)
Micusik, M., Bonnefond, A., Reyes, Y., Bogner, A., Chazeau, L., Plummer, C.J.G., Paulis, M., Leiza, J.R., Morphology of Polymer/Clay Latex Particles Synthesized by Miniemulsion Polymerization: Modeling and Experimental Results Macromol. React. Eng. 2010, 4, 432 (2010).
Houphouet-Boigny C., Plummer CJG, Vacche SD, Michaud V, Wakeman MD, Månson E. J.-A., Hybrid Glass Mat-reinforced Polypropylene-Montmorillonite Nanocomposites, J. Comp. Mater. 44, 1975 (2010).
Delabarde, C., Plummer C.J.G., Bourban, P.-E., Månson E. J.-A., Solidification behavior of PLLA/nHA nanocomposites, Comp. Sci. & Tech. 70, 1813 (2010).
Plummer C.J.G., Ruggerone R., Negrete-Herrera N., Bourgeat-Lami E., Månson J.-A.E., Small Strain Mechanical Properties of Latex-Based Nanocomposite Films, Macromol. Symp. 294, 1 (2010).
Dalle Vacche, S., Plummer C.J.G., Houphouet-Boigny C., Månson E. J.-A., Morphology and mechanical properties of isotactic polypropylene glass mat thermoplastic composites modified with organophilic montmorillonite, J Mater Sci 46, 2112 (2011). 