About École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Holder of a State doctorate in Physical Sciences, specializing in ESI (Electronics, Signal and Image), University Professor, Alain TIEDEU has been teaching at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure Polytechnique de Yaoundé for about twenty years in the ESI field. His research work focuses on the analysis and encryption of signals and images on the one hand, and the development of medical electronic systems on the other hand. Professor TIEDEU has also been an associate member of the ICTP, a reviewer for several scientific journals and conferences and the recipient of scientific distinctions.

Amadou Sall began his professional career in 1999 at the international NGO Enda Tiers Monde. In 2003, he joined the Ecological Monitoring Center (CSE) where he coordinated the execution of several projects in the field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) applied to environmental management. He graduated from the Cheikh Anta Diop University of Dakar, the International Institute of Water and Environmental Engineering, and the National School of Applied Economics. He benefited from several scientific stays at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne between 2002 and 2005.

Dr. André Talla is an engineer specializing in Energy and Industrial Refrigeration Engineering. He has a PhD in Industrial and Mechanical Engineering. He is a lecturer-researcher at the Energy, Water and Environment Laboratory of the Department of Industrial and Mechanical Engineering of the National Higher Polytechnic School, University of Yaoundé I. He is also responsible for the turning and numerical control machining laboratories at the "High Tech Center" of the same institution.

Aniss M. Mezoued is an architect/urban planner and holds a doctorate in Building Art and Urban Planning. He is a postdoctoral researcher at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne –EPFL, in the Laboratoire de Sociologie Urbaine – LaSUR. He is also a guest lecturer at the Université catholique de Louvain – UCL. His research focuses on public spaces, the relationship between transport and urban planning, and the role of actors in the production of territory. After graduating in architecture from the École Polytechnique d'Architecture et d'Urbanisme d'Alger - EPAU (2007) and working for a few years in an architectural firm, Aniss M. Mezoued joined the Université catholique de Louvain to complete a complementary master's degree in urban planning and regional development (2009) and complete a doctoral thesis (2015). The latter is published by the Presses universitaires de Louvain under the title: “The narrative of post-independence Algiers urban planning, past, present, future. In search of the conditions for the institution of public space as mediation and as a project. Case of the Algiers tramway”

Aurelio Muttoni was born in 1958 in Faido (Italian-speaking part of Switzerland). He received his diploma in Civil Engineering from the ETH in Zurich in 1982 and his doctorate from ETH as well in 1989. His research topic was the application of the theory of plasticity to the design of reinforced concrete structures. From 1989 to 2001, he worked as partner in a consulting engineering office in Lugano. He participated to the design of several building and civil engineering structures. He was especially recognized for his innovative structural solutions. He also participated as expert in a series of offshore platform projects in the North Sea. As part of the initial teaching team of the “Accademia di Architettura” of the University of Southern Switzerland, he worked as a professor and developed the field of structures. Since 2000, he is Full Professor and Head of the Structural Concrete Laboratory of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His teaching activities focus on the conceptual design of structures, theory and dimensioning of concrete structures as well as bridge design. His research group is active in the following domains: behaviour and design methods for structures, conceptual design of innovative structures, punching shear of slabs, shear, bond between steel and concrete, mechanical behaviour of ultra-high performance concrete and soil-structure interaction. Starting in 2007, he reduced his activity at EPFL to found the Muttoni & Fernández consulting office (www.mfic.ch). This office is active in the conceptual design, analysis and dimensioning of load-bearing structure in architecture and civil engineering constructions as well as consulting activities in the field of structural engineering.

Dr Ayman Zoubir is an architect and urban planner, specializing in transport and personal mobility. He currently holds the position of contract researcher at the Laboratoire Aménagement Economie Transports of the ENTPE at the University of Lyon. After a master's degree in urban planning from the University of Grenoble, Ayman Zoubir completed his doctorate at the Université Lumière Lyon 2 on the relevance of mobility management strategies in the regulation of daily mobility. His current research activities at LAET focus on issues related to personal mobility and more specifically the observation of individual travel behaviors. He has been involved in the realization and analysis of several mobility surveys, in particular users of the Lyon self-service bicycle system or university audiences at the University of Lyon

Bernard Declève is an engineer-architect, urban planner and full professor at the Catholic University of Louvain (UCL). He directs the UCL School of Urban Planning, located in the Faculty of Architecture, Architectural Engineering, Urban Planning (LOCI-UCL) and is responsible for the UCL Master's degree specializing in urban planning and territorial development. In this context, he coordinates in particular the international team responsible for the course 'Mobility and urban planning'. He is or has been a visiting professor at the University of Guadalajara in Mexico (1991-2000), at the University of Lille 1 / European Studies Program (since 2012), at the Louvain School of Management / Executive Master in Real Estate (2010 and 2011), at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure du Paysage de Versailles (ENSPV) (2007-2010), at the School of Architecture of the City and Territories of Marne-la-Vallée, France (2006-2008), at the Universidad Mayor de San Simón, Cochabamba, Bolivia (2003-2006) and at the Sapienza Università di Roma (since 2006). His personal work and the research he directs focus on the evolution of living conditions in metropolises and on the urban and territorial project as a spatial concept and field of public action. He has extensive international experience, with expertise mainly in the field of support for public project management of urban projects and the facilitation of citizen participation initiatives. His professional career includes stops in Algiers, Algeria (UNESCO, 1979-1984), Dalifor, Senegal (GTZ, 1990-1992), Fortaleza, Brazil (CE, DG VIII, 1992-1994), Guadalajara, Mexico (SEDEUR, ITESO, 1992-1996), France (in the context of multiple projects related to urban policy, 1990-2004), Chile (Inter-American Development Bank, 1996-1997), Madagascar (Fondation de France, 2000-2003). He also has experience in the animation of networks such as Citiz@Move within the framework of the European URBACT programme (2003-2007). He is currently the scientific director of the Metrolab BrabantSZenne, a network research project that studies the conditions for the creation of a metropolitan infrastructure for soft mobility and water and landscape management in the Senne Valley, the cradle of Brussels.

Chantal Maatouk est né en 1979 à Beyrouth. Elle obtient son diplôme d’ingénieur mécanique de l’Université Libanaise, Faculté de Génie en 2004. Elle fait son doctorat en Energétiques et Procédés à l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris en 2008. Elle fait une activité de recherche au centre d’énergétique et Procédés de Mines-Paritech, ou elle est nommée responsable scientifique en 2010. En 2013, elle est nommée Maitre de conférences à l’Université Saint Joseph, Faculté d’Ingénierie. Elle enseigne au cycle ingénieur la thermodynamique, la production d’Énergie Electrique, Introductions aux Energies Renouvelables et l’Optimisation des Procédés Industriels. Ses activités de recherche portent sur l’étude des Systèmes thermodynamiques, l’efficacité énergétique et les énergies renouvelables.

Dr. Christoph Lüthi is an urban planner with over 20 years of experience in planning and design of urban infrastructure in middle and low-income countries. He has a Master’s Degree in Urban Development Planning from the University College of London (UCL), and a PhD in Urban Planning & Engineering from the TU Berlin. He has worked on urban planning and infrastructure issues in Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Egypt, Mauritania, Senegal, India and Nepal. After working for several years as a consultant on urban development projects in Africa and Asia, he joined Sandec as Leader of the Strategic Environmental Sanitation Planning Group. At Sandec he works on state-of-the-art planning tools and frameworks such as Sanitation 21 or CLUES: Community-Led Urban Environmental Sanitation. He is also in charge of the annual EPFL course “Sanitary Engineering in Developing Countries”. Dr. Christoph Lüthi est un planificateur urbain avec plus de 20 ans d’expérience dans la planification et le design d’infrastructures urbaines dans les pays à faible et moyen revenu. Il a un Master en Planification du Développement Urbain du University College de Londres (UCL) et un Doctorat en Planification & Ingénierie Urbaines de la TU Berlin. Il a travaillé sur des problématiques de planification urbaine et d’infrastructure au Kenya, Ouganda, Tanzanie, Egypte, Mauritanie, Sénégal, Inde et Népal. Après avoir travaillé pendant plusieurs années comme consultant dans des projets de développement urbain en Afrique et en Asie, il a rejoint Eawag-Sandec comme chef du groupe de planification stratégique de l’assainissement. À Sandec, il travaille sur des outils et approches de planification intégrée tels que Sanitation21 et CLUES, l’approche communautaire de planification de l’assainissement urbain. Il est aussi en charge du cours « Ingénierie Sanitaire dans les Pays en Développement » à l’EPFL/ETHZ.

Cécile Hébert is professor for Physics at the Institute for Condensed Matter Physics at EPFL and head of the Interdisciplinary Center for Electron Microscopy (CIME), which features cutting edge microscopy both in the field of life and materials sciences. Her research activities cover Electron Energy Loss Spectrometry in the TEM, for chemical analysis, energy filtered TEM, as well as three-dimensional analysis of defects and dislocations in TEM and STEM.

Damir Filipović holds the Swissquote Chair in Quantitative Finance and is Swiss Finance Institute Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. Prior to this, he was head of the Vienna Institute of Finance and professor at the University of Vienna. He previously held the chair of financial and insurance mathematics at the University of Munich, and he was on the faculty of Princeton University. He received his Ph.D. in mathematics from ETH Zurich in 2000. Damir Filipović worked as a scientific consultant for the Swiss Federal Office of Private Insurance from 2003 to 2004. There he co-developed the Swiss Solvency Test, which defines the regulatory capital requirement for all Swiss based insurance companies and groups. He is on the editorial board of several academic journals. His research interests include the term structure of interest rates, credit and volatility risk, quantitative methods in risk management, and stochastic processes. His papers have been published in a variety of academic journals including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Mathematical Finance, Finance and Stochastics, and the Annals of Applied Probability. He is the author of a textbook titled Term-Structure Models.

Dr. Aleksandar Prokopec is a software developer and a concurrent and distributed programming researcher, working at Oracle Labs. He obtained a PhD in Computer Science from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne, Switzerland. As a doctoral assistant and member of the Scala team at EPFL, he actively contributed to the Scala programming language, and has worked on programming abstractions for concurrency, data-parallel programming support, and concurrent data structures for Scala. He created the Scala Parallel Collections framework, which is a library for high-level data-parallel programming in Scala, and participated in working groups for Scala concurrency libraries. He previously worked at Google.

Dr. Linda Strande is an environmental engineer with over 15 years’ experience working internationally in the management of excreta, wastewater and sludge. Dr. Strande is an editor and author of the book Faecal Sludge Management: Systems Approach for Implementation and Operation, and holds interdisciplinary degrees in engineering, soils science and mathematics. Her research at Sandec includes optimisation of treatment technologies, innovation in resource recovery, quantification and characterization, and methods for sustainable systems level implementations. Her academic background, together with wideranging international work experience, has provided her with a global perspective, and an ability to research and apply environmental engineering fundamentals in complex, interdisciplinary situations.

Dr. Christian Zurbrügg has more than 15 years of experience in waste management in middle and low-income countries. He has a Master’s Degree in Geology from the University of Bern, Switzerland, and a PhD in Environmental Engineering from the University of Brescia, Italy. He is Member of the Directorate at Eawag, the Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology and Group Leader of Solid Waste Management Research in the Sandec Department. He has conducted applied research projects on waste management concepts and technologies in Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Ghana, Burkina Faso and Costa Rica in collaboration with local research partners. He is author of many books and scientific papers on waste management, organic waste recycling, composting, anaerobic digestion, waste collection, market development & research as well as sanitation systems and technologies. He lectures at EPFL and ETHZ on “Sanitary Engineering in Developing Countries” giving inputs on solid waste management.

Dr Duncan Alexander is a staff scientist and senior microscopist at the Interdisciplinary Centre for Electron Microscopy (CIME) at the EPFL. Inspired by the incredible scientific versatility of advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM), combined with the uniquely aesthetic nature of TEM imaging, he specializes in the application of TEM techniques for solving questions across a multi-disciplinary array of domains. With particular interests in TEM spectral and diffraction mapping, and aberration corrected imaging, he has published in research fields from materials science and metallurgy to nanophotonics and atmospheric sciences.

An engineer specializing in transport issues, with a PhD in Economic Sciences from the University of Lyon and a PhD in Urban Studies from INRS-UCS, Montreal, Emmanuel Ravalet is a senior researcher at the Laboratoire de Sociologie Urbaine (LaSUR), at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His thesis focused on the cross-approach of residential segregation and daily mobility behaviors in several contexts (Lyon, Montreal, Puebla and Niamey). He then spent three years at Certu (now CEREMA) in Lyon as an economic research officer. In 2011 and 2012, he held expert positions on sustainable cities for the European Commission. As a socio-economist and statistician, he works on energy consumption, new modes of travel and mobility services, work-related mobility and transport/territory links.

Etienne Robert completed a Bachelor of Engineering in 2004 at École Polytechnique de Montréal followed by a Mechanical Engineering Diploma in 2005 at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and a Doctorate in Science in 2008, also at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. His doctoral thesis topic was the experimental study of thermo-diffusive instabilities in combustion. He continued his research career at Kungliga Techniska Högskola (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. Since 2013, he has been an Assistant Professor at École Polytechnique de Montréal where he continues his research in the fields of combustion and acoustic manipulation of aerosols. He has also been teaching thermodynamics since 2013.

Fernand Kouamé holds a State Doctorate (HDR) in Natural Sciences and is a Professor-Researcher at the Félix HOUHPOUËT-BOIGNY University in Abidjan-Cocody (Côte d'Ivoire). He coordinates teaching and research activities in Geomatics applied to natural resource management at the University Center for Research and Application in Remote Sensing (CURAT). A member of the "Remote Sensing Network" of the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie, he has participated in numerous research projects on the digital processing of satellite data and their integration into Geographic Information Systems.

Félix Schmidt is working since 1987 in the field of applied waste management and technologies, in Switzerland and in numerous high, middle and low income countries. His experience includes the technical and institutional aspects of waste management like planning, cost calculation, tariff setting and cost recovery, information and training and PPP (Public Private Partnerships). He is coaching or piloting different projects of waste collection, transport and recycling optimization. He participated in the development, construction and operation of a large number of treatment facilities, including landfills, incinerators, recycling and composting plants. Moreover he participated in different rehabilitations of dumpsites and contaminated areas. He is member of the board of directors of CSD Engineers (http://www.csd.ch), a Swiss company leader in the environmental and waste management fields, active in different countries. Since 45 years, CSD has been leader in the construction and rehabilitation of landfills in Switzerland. Félix Schmidt has been teaching at EPFL since 2001, in Sanitary Engineering, water and waste management, as well as in Environmental Impact Assessment. He developed activities in different countries of Europe (Albania, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, France, Germany, Kosovo, Luxemburg, Switzerland), Africa (Burkina, Egypt, Niger, Morocco, Sao Tomé, Senegal, Rwanda, Tunisia) and Latin America (Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Guatemala, Honduras, Peru).

MSc., Eng. Imanol Zabaleta is and Agricultural and Environmental Engineer. He has a bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Engineering from the Public University of Navarre, Spain, and Master’s degree in Urban Environmental Management and Technology from the Wageningen University, Netherlands, where his thesis focused on nutrient and energy balances regarding organic waste management in a regional level. Since 2013, he works at Sandec as a project officer and researcher. He conducted field work on Solid Waste Management in Bolivia, Philippines and Tanzania in collaboration with local partners as well as participated in conferences and workshops in Indonesia, Colombia and Brazil. His current work focuses on organic waste treatment strategies. He also lectures at EPFL and ETHZ on “Solid Waste Management in Developing Countries” as well as supervises students conducting their internships and other study related projects.