Marilyne Andersen will be the new dean of ENAC

Marilyne Andersen is Associate Professor in Sustainable Construction Technologies at the ENAC Faculty. She directs the Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Performance-Integrated Design, which she inaugurated in 2010. Her research focuses on the performance of buildings in their architectural context, and more particularly, on the use and optimization of natural light in buildings. We interviewed her a few months before she is to take office next September.

What made you decide to take the lead of the Faculty?

To me, ENAC’s configuration is already very unique. EPFL is one of a small group of universities around the world that provides the opportunity to forge such strong relationships between architecture, civil and environmental engineering, and urban planning. Ideas can be explored on multiple levels, in research, education, innovation, and technology transfer – even in terms of academic recognition. I think we should play this card and continue to strengthen it.

What kinds of interactions do you see between architecture, civil and environmental engineering, and urban planning?

There are a number of laboratories that are already active at the interface between traditional domains of expertise; some that come to mind are iBois, the Laboratory for Timber Constructions, LMS, the Laboratory for Soil Mechanics, and the laboratories at INTER, the Institute for Urban and Regional Science, which, among others, blend a multitude of scientific disciplines. To round off this approach, we should encourage core disciplinary fields to collaborate in addressing new questions that are central to each of them by leveraging their unique perspective, enriched by broadened research horizons. Take, for instance, architecture and environmental engineering. These fields may seem distant, yet the potential for links is huge. Indeed, buildings interact with climate, but how can we anticipate the effects that different climate change scenarios will have on them? Both the impact of the built environment on the natural environment and vice versa – from large civil engineering projects to sites in extreme locations – raise tough questions that can only be addressed by going beyond today’s borders in each field. The potential for synergies is enormous.

How can interactions between different disciplines be fostered?

My predecessors, Laurent Vulliet and Marc Parlange, successfully fostered an “ENAC spirit.” I’d like to further strengthen this spirit of scientific curiosity through concrete projects that encourage the laboratories involved to push the envelope in terms of their research. I’d like to develop a common base, without diluting the expertise, in order to preserve the identity of each field, and in the long run to be able to do first-rate scientific research, while as much as possible from the potential offered by interdisciplinary collaborations. Regarding education, one could envision a pedagogical project that celebrates the process of co-creation. Its strength would lie in its capacity to highlight the value of sharing knowledge. The idea of looking at what other people are doing to progress in one’s own field – a notion that lies at the core of the scientific research process - is one that I find appealing.

Is it easy to build bridges and work together?

For me, it is a vital source of enrichment. Every day, since I began my career, I experience the potential of bridging domains that, at least from a scientific perspective, are not very close to each other. For my diploma and later for my PhD, I was already sitting on the fence between building physics and optics. Later, at MIT, I began to approach the field of architecture. Today in my lab, I have integrated these subjects, adding other ones such as computer science to support the decision-making process using numerical simulations. As I have always felt drawn to the field of light, I’ve established ties to photobiology and vision specialists. Building bridges without necessarily speaking the same language from the start is not easy, but it is exciting.

What will be your priorities as the new dean?

My first priority will be to map existing and missing domains of expertise within the Faculty, in order to foster its common identity by looking at it as a single unit. To do so, I will base myself on the experience and analyses of my colleagues at ENAC. Furthermore, by defining objective indicators related to publications and financing, for example, we will be able to understand how bridges are built within ENAC and with groups throughout EPFL, as well as how we are linked to the rest of the world through our research. This map will help us prioritize our projects and propose new, novel synergies.