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.
Melanie BlokeschMelanie Blokesch holds a PhD degree from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich, Germany. After a postdoctoral stay at Stanford University (USA; Department of Microbiology and Immunology) she joined EPFL as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor (tenured) in 2016. In 2018, Melanie Blokesch was nominated as new member of the the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) National Research Council (starting date: April 2019). Melanie Blokesch is also an elected member of the European Academy of Microbiology (EAM; since 2018) and the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO; since 2019). Among other awards and grants, Melanie Blokesch has been honored with the Prize for Junior Scientists of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2005, an ERC Starting Grant in 2012, the EPFL teaching award "Polysphère" for best teacher in the School of Life Sciences (academic year 2014-2015), the Research Award by the Association for General and Applied Microbiology (VAAM; Germany) in 2015, and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2016. In 2017, Melanie Blokesch was awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) International Research Scholarship.
Jacques FellayJacques Fellay is a medical scientist with expertise in infectious diseases and human genomics. He obtained his MD from the University of Lausanne in 2002 and his PhD from University of Utrecht. After a clinical training in infectious diseases in Switzerland and a 4-years postdoctoral fellowship at Duke University, he joined the EPFL in April 2011 with an SNF Professorship.
On top of his EPFL affiliation, Jacques is also Head of Precision Medicine at the University Hospital (CHUV) in Lausanne, Group Leader at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics, and Co-director of the Health2030 Genome Center at Campus Biotech in Geneva.
Nikolaos StergiopoulosEducation
MTE, Managing the Technology Enterprise Program (2000), IMD, Lausanne
Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering & Engineering Mechanics (1990) Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.
MS in Biomedical Engineering (1987) Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa.
Diploma in Mechanical Engineering (1985) National Technical University of Athens.
Professional Activities
2002 - present: Professor and director of LHTC
2010 - present: Founder and director of Rheon Medical SA, Préverenges, Switzerland
2008 - present: Founder and director of Antlia S.A., PSE-C, EPFL campus, Switzerland
1998 - 2007: Founder and Scientific Director of EndoArt S.A., Lausanne, Switzerland
1996 - 2002: Assistant professor at the Biomedical Engineering Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland.
1991 - 1996: Research Associate at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology - Lausanne
1990 - 1991: Lecturer, Iowa State University
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.
Arne Seitz04/1996-06/2000 Scientific co-worker at Philipps-University of Marburg, Dep. of Physical Chemistry
07/2000-10/2002 Post Doc at Max-Planck Unit for Structural Molecular Biology in Hamburg
11/2002-11/2005 Post Doc at European Molecular Biolohy Laboratory (EMBL), Cell Biology and Cell Biophysics Programme
11/2005-03/2009 Staff Scientist at Advanced Light Microscopy Facility, EMBL
04/2009- Head of Bioimaging and Optics platforme (BIOP), Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL)
Gerardo TurcattiSenior scientific level (R&D) with extensive experience in the management of multidisciplinary technological projects. Prof. Gerardo Turcatti, directs the academic technological platform, Biomolecular Screening Facility (BSF) at the EPFL he created in 2006. In the framework of the NCCR-Chemical Biology, he is project leader of the program ACCESS (An Academic Chemical Screening Platform for Switzerland). Previously he co-founded and acted as CTO of Manteia S.A., a Swiss-based company that developed high throughput DNA sequencing technologies currently owned by Illumina and used in the ‘Next Generation Sequencing’ instruments. Prior to this experience, Prof. Turcatti had a long multidisciplinary career in R&D divisions of Biotechnology and Pharmaceutical companies with extensive expertise in several Chemical Biology-related disciplines such as Drug Screening, Chemical Biology, Bio-analytical Chemistry, DNA and Protein Chemistry. Prof. Turcatti earned his Master in Chemical Engineering at the University of Geneva and his PhD in Chemistry and Biochemistry from the EPFL where he received the award for the best doctoral thesis of the year.
Michel AguetDr. Michel Aguet, MD, held positions in academia and industry (Associate Professor at the Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Zürich; Head of Molecular Oncology, Genentech, So. San Francisco) before he was appointed director of the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) (1996-2009). In the context of the integration of ISREC into the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), he was appointed as Full Professor at the newly established School of Life Sciences in 2005. From 2001-2013 he directed the National Center of Competence in Research (NCCR) in Molecular Oncology, a national program launched by the Swiss National Science Foundation to encourage translational cancer research and for which ISREC was the leading house. Dr. Aguet has been a SAB member in the pharmaceutical industry, biotech industry and venture capital industry since 1997.
A large part of his scientific career was devoted to exploring the molecular biology of interferons (cloning of the interferon gamma receptor, generation of various interferon signaling mutants in the mouse) and, in collaboration with Prof. Charles Weissmann, to investigating the role of prion related protein PrP in mouse prion disease models. In recent years his research focused on characterizing the role of BCL9 proteins, which are part of the Wnt/beta-catenin transcriptional activation complex, in regulating stem cell traits in intestinal epithelium and colorectal cancer. His laboratory is now closed due to retirement.
Tamar Kohn2014 - present Associate Professor, EPFL and adjunct researcher, Eawag 2007 - 2013 Assistant Professor, EPFL 2004 - 2006 Postdoctoral researcher, UC Berkeley 2000 - 2004 PhD, Environmental Engineering, Johns Hopkins University 1999 Diploma, Environmental Sciences, ETHZ
Claudia Rebeca Binder SignerNée à Montréal, Claudia R. Binder est d’origine canadienne, suisse et colombienne. Elle grandit entre la Suisse et la Colombie. Alumni de l’ETH de Zurich, elle y obtient un diplôme en biochimie et un doctorat en Sciences de l'environnement, de 1985 à 1996. Elle poursuit sa carrière avec un post doctorat à l'Université du Maryland, aux États-Unis, de 1996 à 1998, et travaille en qualité d’assistante-senior à l’ETH jusqu’en 2006, où elle se spécialise dans les systèmes humains-environnementaux. Elle est ensuite nommée Professeure assistante au Département de géographie de l'Université de Zurich, un poste qu’elle occupe jusqu’en 2009.
Elle obtient en 2009 le titre de Professeure ordinaire en Sciences systémiques à l’Université de Graz, en Autriche et rejoint en 2011 le Département de Géographie de l’Université de Munich, en Allemagne, en tant que Professeure ordinaire en relations humaines-environnementales. Elle intègre l’EPFL en mars 2016, où elle ouvre le Laboratoire de relations humaines-environnementales dans les systèmes urbains (HERUS), rattaché à la Chaire La Mobilière pour l’écologie urbaine et un mode de vie durable, au sein de la Faculté de l’environnement naturel, architectural et construit (ENAC).
Ses recherches portent sur l'analyse, la modélisation et l'évaluation de la transition des systèmes urbains vers la durabilité. Elle examine en particulier comment nous pouvons mieux comprendre la dynamique du métabolisme urbain, ce qui caractérise une ville durable et ce qui anime et entrave les processus de transformation. Elle explore ces sujets en combinant les domaines des sciences sociales, des sciences naturelles et de la science des données. Ses recherches portent sur l'alimentation, l'énergie, les modes de vie et les transports durables dans les systèmes urbains.
En Suisse, Binder a été nommé membre du Conseil de la recherche, Division des programmes du Fonds national suisse (FNS) en 2016 et fait partie du Comité directeur du Programme national de recherche 71 du FNS, "Gestion de la consommation d'énergie" et du Swiss Competence Centers for Energy Research (SCCER). Elle est également membre du comité directeur sur Sustainability Research des Académies suisses des sciences et des lettres. En 2019, elle a été élue membre du Conseil universitaire de l'Université de Munich (LMU).
A l’EPFL, Claudia R. Binder est la directrice académique du programme d’enseignement interdisciplinaire «Projeter Ensemble». Elle a été nommée membre de la Direction du Centre de l'énergie en 2018 et dirige depuis 2019 le groupe de travail sur la Stratégie énergétique et de durabilité de l’école.
