27-29 June 2018 | SwissTech Convention Centre | EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland.
Barbara Becker is member of the Management Team of ETH Global. She has been at ETH Zurich for almost twenty years in different capacities of managing research for development (R4D),.i.a. as Managing Director of the former North-South Centre. Her professional background is tropical agro-ecology. Barbara Becker obtained her habilitation at the University of Kassel, Germany. She gained international experience as UNEP field project officer, where she investigated the vegetation ecology of Andean land use systems in Peru. Her doctoral research focused on edible wild plants in Africa. Her experience in research management is based on former positions with the German government and functions in various governance bodies related to international agricultural and research partnerships.
Prof. Jean-Claude Bolay was appointed Director of Cooperation at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne [EPFL] in 2001 and has headed what became the Cooperation & Development Center [CODEV] since 2005. A sociologist by training, he specialized in urban issues in Latin America, Asia, and West Africa. He prepared his PhD in Political Sciences at El Colegio de Mexico, then at UC Berkeley, USA. Before joining EPFL in 1989, he worked for the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation [SDC] both in Switzerland and in Cameroon. He has carried out many international research projects in Vietnam and Latin American countries in particular, looking at social practices in urban societies, sustainable urban development, and poverty reduction in developing countries. He was a scientific advisor and evaluator for the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research, the Belgian Universities’ Commission for Development and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among other institutions. At EPFL, he has directed postgraduate courses on development in Africa and India. In parallel to his position as Director of CODEV, he was appointed Adjunct Professor in 2005 in the Laboratory of Urban Sociology of the Natural, Architectural, and Built Environment School at EPFL.
Maurizio Bona was born in Milan. He holds an engineering degree (1979) and a Doctor degree on material science (1983) from Politecnico di Milano. Starting in the mid-eighties he participated in the design and development phases of the LHC* superconducting magnets. In particular he was in charge of the finiteelement structural design of the main dipole, as well as of the development in industry of some short-length prototypes, of the first three 10-m long prototypes and of the first 15-m long prototype. In the period 1993-95 he was also Invited Professor at University of Genoa, teaching applied superconductivity and superconducting magnets. Once the R&D phase of the LHC dipoles concluded, he led the Technical Group (1998) and the Integrated Safety and Environment Group (2003) of the CERN Safety department. He then led the Safety department from June 2006 until the end of his mandate in December 2008. From 2009 to end 2015 he was the Advisor to the Director-General, charged with relations with international organizations. He was instrumental to develop the CERN network of relations with other international organizations and to obtain the status of Observer for CERN in the General Assembly of the United Nations in December 2012. From January to September 2016 he served as the Head of Relations with international organization.As from October 2016 he is Senior Advisor for relations with Parliaments and Science for policy, as well as Senior Advisor on knowledge transfer.
Dr. Gadgil has a doctorate in physics from the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley). He has substantial experience in technical, economic, and policy research on energy efficiency and its implementation—particularly in developing countries. For example, the utility-sponsored compact fluorescent lamp leasing programs that he pioneered are being successfully implemented by utilities in dozens of emerging-economies and developing countries. Per UNEP estimates, these programs were saving about US$5 billion per year and benefiting about 100 million households by 2011, and the numbers have continued to increase since then. He has several patents and inventions to his credit, among them the “UV Waterworks,” a technology to inexpensively disinfect drinking water in the developing countries, which enables offering, at profit, affordable safe drinking water to poor communities in poor countries. In 2014, there were about 5 million daily customers in Asia and Africa for this drinking water. He received the Discover Award in 1996 for the most significant environmental invention of the year, as well as the Popular Science award for “Best of What is New – 1996.” In recent years, he has worked on ways to inexpensively remove arsenic from Bangladesh drinking water, and on fuel-efficient stoves for Darfur.
PhD in Environmental Sciences, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology at Lausanne (EPFL), 2004. Master in Environmental Engineering and Management, EPFL, 1999, B.a in Chemistry, Universidad Valle, Cali-Colombia, 1991. Adjoin Professor at Universidad Valle, Cali-Colombia (1994) and Professor at Universidad EAN, Bogotá-Colombia (since 2009). She was awarded with PhD grants from the Colombian National Fund for Science (Colciencias) and the Erna Hamburger Foundation for research and cooperation projects with Colombia. Currently, Director and Professor of the Environmental Engineering Deparment at EAN University, with undergraduate and graduate programs in charge. Has led and taught the course of technologies for sustainable development for Engineering PhD Program over the 4 years. She has worked with research centers on scientific cooperation and sustainable development projects, which include work with the communities, local environmental authorities, the Ministry of Environment, academic institutions and companies.
Michaël Thémans holds a M.Sc. in Applied Mathematics (University of Namur, Belgium) and a Ph.D. in Operations Research and Transportation Modeling (EPFL, Switzerland). His main scientific expertise is in the design, development and applications of demand models and optimization algorithms, which he successfully used during ten years in transportation, food and marketing contexts. He also holds significant experience in market research and consumer understanding. Since January 2017, he is the Deputy of the Vice-President for Innovation at EPFL and the Head of the “Large Enterprises” and “Innovation Projects” Units of the Vice-Presidency for Innovation. He also holds the position of Vice-President of the EPFL Innovation Park Foundation.
She was born on 20 June 1961 in Vietnam. Currently (since November 2013), Executive Director of the Asian Water Research Center (CARE-Rescif) Polytechnic Institute of Hochiminh City (HCMUT). A former HCMUT student, she completed her DEA (Degree in Advanced Studies) in Mechanics of Geophysics and Environment at the Joseph Fourier University (UJF), Grenoble, France. After that, she obtained the degree of Doctor in Earth Sciences also at the UJF. Since 1984, she is a teacher-researcher at HCMUT. She was Deputy Director of the Department of Research and Post-graduate Studies and then Director of International Relations and R & D at HCMUT. She also participated in extra-professional activities as secretary of the Club Francophone in Hochiminh city in 1995 – 1998 and coordinator of the project “Feasibility study after rice harvesting in the Mekong Delta”. A project financed by the French Development Agency (AFD) in 1999.