wire - news in brief

The headquarters of Vaudoise Insurance in Lausanne, designed by Swiss architect Jean Tschumi, is the subject of a detailed monument study to guide restoration work.

Three scientific prizes will be awarded this year by the Leenaards Foundation, including two for research carried out in partnership with EPFL.

Since 2016, the Swiss Cancer Center Léman provides a space for scientists and clinicians from across the Lake Geneva region to pool their efforts, share insights and work together on innovative cancer treatments.

On January 31, the EPFL Spacecraft Team's onboard computer Bunny was launched in California, USA, hosted on a D'Orbit spacecraft as part of Starlink's 2-6 mission.

A recent publication explores the unique history of dormitories from the Middle Ages to present day.

Researchers have developed a novel approach to network analysis that allows them to reveal and interpret, for the first time, interactions among multiple variables in data from neuroscience, economics, and epidemiology. Many phenomena - brain signals, stock prices, or COVID hospitalizations, for example - can be studied using time series data, which are collected as repeated measurements over a given time interval.

1. EPFL mathematician Maryna Viazovska is awarded a Fields Medal In July, Maryna Viazovska, who holds the Chair of Number Theory at EPFL, has been awarded a Fields Medal , widely considered to be the highest accolade in her discipline and described as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics. At 37 years of age, Viazovska has thus become only the second female Fields Medalist - after Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014.

EPFL professor Jacques Fellay, who served on the Swiss National Covid-19 Task Force, has been selected for a new advisory committee that the government set up recently so policymakers and scientists can continue their joint efforts. The pandemic did have a silver lining. At least that was the case in Switzerland, where the public-health crisis opened up the lines of communication between policymakers and scientists like never before.

With its Solutions4Sustainability initiative, EPFL aims to channel its community members' knowledge and skills towards the goal of promoting more environmentally friendly lifestyles.

Researchers have teamed up with Dartfish and the Lausanne Hockey Club to push the boundaries of sports-performance analysis by applying computer vision and machine-learning technology to action on the ice. While there's no substitute for long hours of training, sports video analysis has become a must-have in the race for medals.

Uzufly's technology uses aerial imaging to generate 3D models of cities and regions with advanced precision, enabling urban planners to incorporate full-scale designs of all types of architectural and urban structures.

Chalets have been widely adopted as the standard form of architecture for mountain homes - but according to Patrick Giromini, an architect and lecturer at EPFL, it's worth taking a close look at why.

Olivier Lalancette, an EPFL Master's student in architecture, has come up with some development proposals for the Brig-Visp-Naters conurbation.

Scientists at the Swiss Plasma Center at EPFL, in collaboration with Beyond Gravity and with the support of the ESA, have developed a slip ring assembly that can more than triple the operational voltage of new-generation, high-voltage satellites.

Ambrogio Fasoli, EPFL's Associate Vice President for Research and Director of the Swiss Plasma Center, and Caroline Vandevyver, the Head of EPFL's Research Office, spoke with us about the importance of research integrity, the challenges in this area and EPFL's positions on the issues. According to Ambrogio Fasoli and Caroline Vandevyver, education and communication are key to promoting research integrity and earning the trust of industry and civil society.

The recently completed first edition of the KimCheese program challenged students from Switzerland and Korea to design solutions to everyday obstacles faced by senior citizens in both countries. The KimCheese program is led by College of Humanities (CDH) lecturer Marc Laperrouza, who also initiated the China Hardware Innovation Camp ( CHIC ) and the India Switzerland Social Innovation Camp ( INSSINC ).

The new exhibition produced by EPFL Pavilions transforms the scientific inquiry of astrophysics into sensory and emotional experiences.

For his Master's project, architecture student Jeremy Morris assessed the life cycle of building materials in Vaud Canton.

The manufacturing industry is going through a period of profound change, driven in part by the advent of 3D printing and other advanced technologies. In order to support Swiss industry at this critical juncture, EPFL and CSEM have joined forces to create the Micromanufacturing Science & Engineering Center (M2C), a new focal point for pure research, technology transfer and everything in between.

As the new academic year kicks into gear, we spoke to Simone Deparis, the executive director of EPFL's Propedeutic Center (CePro), which is aiming to raise the first-year pass rate (currently 51.5%) without lowering standards.

Today EPFL inaugurated its new heating plant, which has the capacity to heat and cool the Lausanne campus solely by drawing water from Lake Geneva and recovering excess heat from a connected data center.

SUMMER SERIES - Master's project (11). EPFL student Antoine Madrona helped develop an algorithm that, after being trained on data from many different hospitals, can improve stroke diagnosis - all while protecting patient confidentiality.

Summer series - Master's project (10). Jérémie Pochon has built a test bench for evaluating the type of motor that could one day drive the Hyperloop transportation system. The Hyperloop holds the promise of low-carbon transportation that's fast, efficient and affordable. But before passengers can be enclosed inside a pod and propelled along a vacuum tube at mind-boggling speeds, there's a lot of modeling, simulation, testing and validation work to be done - starting at a pilot scale.

Plants use light waves from only a portion of the spectrum for photosynthesis - the remainder can be recovered and used to generate solar power.

Zebrafish eggs are among the most commonly used model organisms in genetic, developmental and toxicology research.

Summer series - Semester project. Three university students, as part of their critical data studies class, wrote a light-hearted yet instructive comic strip about perception biases in the presentation of data. The story starts with two artisan cheesemakers who are hauling their product to market when their carts - one horse-drawn, the other ox-drawn - collide.

The Low-Tech Lab in Lausanne has been part of the Unipoly association of EPFL since 2021 and aims to popularize the low-tech approach already found in several other European universities.

Summer series - Master's project (7). Two EPFL Master's students carried out meticulous research on heat islands, or densely packed urban areas with features that can aggravate high temperatures during heat waves, posing a serious threat to vulnerable residents. The summer of 2022 was unprecedented: the series of heat waves between June and August provided a glimpse of how climate change will make cities increasingly arduous places to live in the summer months.

Held every year on August 12, International Youth Day provides a platform for young people to focus on how they will develop innovative and entrepreneurial solutions for the future.

Summer series - Bachelor's project (6). A group of around 15 EPFL students spent a semester working on projects using BERNINA sewing machines, dispelling common misconceptions and stereotypes in the process.

The new Space Sustainability Rating hosted at eSpace, the EPFL Space Center, encourages space actors to design and implement sustainable and responsible space missions - trailblazing the path to ensure the long-term sustainability of the space environment.

Summer Series - Bachelor's project (5). Delivering sustainability in traffic is no easy feat. Could software that globally coordinates cars to avoid traffic jams and congestion be the answer? In 2019 drivers in Rome lost an average of 166 hours to traffic jams and congestion.

Sarah Kenderdine, head of the Laboratory for Experimental Museology, is leading the digitization and valorization of the Panorama of the Battle of Murten - a 100 x 10-meter work created in 1893 by Ge

Summer series - Master's project (3). Two groups of EPFL students turned their blueprints into functional prototypes: a self-heating food box and a self-cooling vaccine transport container. For engineers, little can be more satisfying than turning your ideas into working objects you can see and touch.

Plastics are everywhere in our environment, even inside living organisms. This article looks at the impact of this major pollution risk and accompanies our report on the SEA Plastics expedition, which is currently crisscrossing the Mediterranean to raise awareness of the issue. Nowhere on Earth is free from microplastics.

Summer series - Master's project. Soccer, tennis, skiing and many other sports involve changes of direction. For these athletes, performance hinges on speed and agility. Anything but running straight toward the goal! EPFL student Celestin Vallat has just completed his Master's project in mechanical engineering.

Whether it's jazz recordings, concert footage, photographs or interviews, researchers are applying machine learning and digital museology techniques to archives of cultural data to achieve new artistic and creative experiences.