Special edition
October 2024

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Open Campus

Internal EPFL Newsletter

Dear EPFL community member, 

Following the recent consultation and discussions, and after considering the feedback from the EPFL community, the School’s leadership team has approved the amended version of Lex 1.1.1 proposed by President-designate Anna Fontcuberta i Morral. The leadership team has also approved the appointment of the vice presidents and associate vice presidents who will serve alongside Ambrogio Fasoli, the new Vice President for Academic Affairs (Provost), when he takes up his role on 1 January 2025. The Vice Presidency for Academic Affairs (VPA) oversees EPFL’s activities in the core missions of education and research. In the interest of collaboration and resource efficiency, the President and the Provost will share a common general and support staff. 

The School has also created the new role of Delegate to the Provost for Student Relations (DP-RE). This individual will be responsible for maintaining close ties with our student body and for serving as the main point of contact for students and EPFL-recognized associations.

AVPs and Deputy

Nicolas Grandjean heads the Advanced Semiconductors for Photonics and Electronics Laboratory (LASPE), which is part of the School of Basic Sciences. His lab is known globally for its cutting-edge research into the physics and technology of gallium nitride (GaN) nanostructures. He has authored more than 600 papers published in peer-reviewed journals. Nicolas joined EPFL in 2004 as a tenure-track assistant professor in the School of Basic Sciences. In 2023, he received the Polysphere Award for best teacher in his school, as well as the Golden Polysphere Award for best teacher overall, both of which are voted for by students. He served as head of the physics section between 2018 and 2022.

Annalisa Buffa, the current Associate Vice President for Postgraduate Education, will serve as Associate Vice President for Research starting on 1 January 2025. An internationally recognized expert in computational mathematics, Annalisa joined EPFL in 2016 and now holds the Chair of Numerical Modelling and Simulation within the School of Basic Sciences. In her current AVP role, she led the EPFL Doctoral School with a strong focus on student support and well-being. She also played a major role in embedding the Extension School within the UNIL-EPFL Foundation for Continuing Education and in expanding the school’s course offering in three key areas: digitalization and technology design, industry transformation and healthcare, and sustainability and the green transition. Since 2018, she has been a corresponding member of the Accademia dei Lincei and, in 2022, she was elected a foreign associate of France’s prestigious Académie des Sciences.

David Atienza has led the Embedded Systems Laboratory (ESL) within the School of Engineering since joining EPFL in 2008. In 2017, he was named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) for his contribution to methods and tools for multi-processor systems-on-chip. In 2022, he was elected a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) in recognition of his work on the design of high-performance integrated systems and ultra-low-power edge circuits and architectures. In 2021, David was appointed director of EPFL’s EcoCloud center. Under his leadership, the center overhauled its entire ecosystem and developed a new approach to delivering sustainability-focused IT systems. He stepped down from the helm of the EcoCloud center on 30 September in order to focus on his new role as AVP-CP.  

David has been serving as acting AVP-CP since 1 October in order to assist with the handover to the new EPFL President. He will take up the role on a permanent basis on 1 January 2025.

Anne-Marie Kermarrec has led the Scalable Computing Systems Laboratory (SaCS) within the School of Computer and Communication Sciences since 2020. She also spent five years at the helm of Mediego, an online content-personalization startup she founded in 2015. Outside her research, she is a strong advocate for gender equality in computer science, and in science in general. She wrote a book on this subject, Numérique, compter avec les femmes, was published by Odile Jacob in 2021. Anne-Marie was made a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur, one of France’s highest honors, for her research and entrepreneurship in the field of distributed computing and peer-to-peer systems. She is also a member of the Academia Europaea and an ACM Fellow.

Andreas Osterwalder joined EPFL in 2009 as a Swiss National Science Foundation-funded professor. After a period as a senior scientist, he was appointed an adjunct professor in 2022. He is a highly recognized scientist in fundamental research on chemical dynamics where he has made a number of major contributions to gas-phase collision experiments, in particular using novel methods to fully control the reactants and to study chemical reactions with oriented molecules below 1 K. Andreas regularly leads outreach initiatives such as the Scientastic festival and EPFL’s open house events. He has been president of the EPFL Teachers Council (CCE) since 2021. He previously served on the School’s COVID-19 Operating Committee and is currently a member of the ILOT Operating Committee.

Contact: opencampus@epfl.ch