Simon Nessim HeneinSimon Henein obtient son diplôme d’ingénieur en microtechnique de l’Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) en 1996, puis le titre de docteur ès sciences techniques de cette même institution en 2000. En 2001 il publie un livre intitulé « Conception des guidages flexibles » qui devient une référence dans le monde de la conception micromécanique. Ce livre sera traduit en anglais et complété dans un ouvrage collectif intitulé "The art of flexure mechanism design" publié en 2017.Simon Henein s’engage ensuite professionnellement au Centre Suisse d’Electronique et Microtechnique (CSEM) où il conçoit et développe des mécanismes dédiés à des applications robotiques, spatiales, astrophysique, biomédicales et horlogères, ainsi qu’à l’Institut Paul Scherrer où il développe des instruments pour le synchrotron suisse SLS. Depuis le 1er novembre 2012, il est professeur associé en microtechnique à l’EPFL et directeur du Laboratoire de conception micromécanique et horlogère (Instant-Lab). De 2020 à 2021 il effectue un congé de recherche en tant que professeur invité au Centre d'études théâtrales de l'Université de Lausanne (faculté des lettres).
Auke IjspeertAuke Ijspeert is a full professor at the EPFL, and head of the Biorobotics Laboratory (BioRob). He has a B.Sc./M.Sc. in physics from the EPFL (1995), and a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of Edinburgh (1999). He carried out postdocs at IDSIA and EPFL, and at the University of Southern California (USC). He then became a research assistant professor at USC, and an external collaborator at ATR (Advanced Telecommunications Research institute) in Japan. In 2002, he came back to the EPFL as an SNF assistant professor. He was promoted to associate professor in October 2009 and to full professor in April 2016. His primary affiliation is with the Institute of Bioengineering, and secondary affiliation with the Institute of Mechanical Engineering. His research interests are at the intersection between robotics, computational neuroscience, nonlinear dynamical systems, and machine learning. He is interested in using numerical simulations and robots to get a better understanding of sensorimotor coordination in animals, and in using inspiration from biology to design novel types of robots and adaptive controllers. (see for instance Ijspeert et al Science 2007, Ijspeert Science 2014, and Nyakatura et al Nature 2019). He is also investigating how to assist people with limited mobility using exoskeletons and assistive furniture. He is regularly invited to give talks on these topics (e.g. TED talk given at TED Global Geneva, Dec 8 2015). With his colleagues, he has received paper awards at ICRA2002, CLAWAR2005, IEEE Humanoids 2007, IEEE ROMAN 2014, CLAWAR 2015, SAB2018, and CLAWAR 2019. He is an IEEE Fellow, member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science magazine, and associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Medical Robotics and Bionics and for the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics. He has acted as an associate editor for the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (2009-2013) and for Soft Robotics (2018-2021). He was a guest editor for the Proceedings of IEEE, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, Autonomous Robots, IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, and Biological Cybernetics. He has been the organizer of 7 international conferences (BioADIT2004, SAB2004, AMAM2005, BioADIT2006, LATSIS2006, SSRR2016, AMAM2019), and a program committee member of over 50 conferences.
Martin HaslerAfter a PhD and a postdoc in theoretical physics, Martin Hasler has pursued reasearch in electrical circuit and filter theory. His current interests are the applications of nonlinear dynamics in engineering and biology. In particular, he is interested in information processing in biological and technological networks. He is most well-known for his work in communications using chaos and in synchronization of networks of dynamical systems.
He joined EPFL in 1974, became a titular professor in 1984 and a full professor in 1998. In 2002, he was acting Dean of the School of Computer and Communication Sciences. He was elected Fellow of the IEEE in 1993. He was the general chair of ISCAS 2000 in Geneva. He was Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions in Circuits and Systems from 1991 to 1993 and Editor-in-Chief from 1993 to 1995. He was elected vice-president for Technical Activities of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society from 2002 to 2005. He is a member of the Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation.