News EPFL

New leadership in architecture

Published:27.07.11 — Luca Ortelli is the new director of the Institute of Architecture and the City in EPFL’s School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC). He succeeds professor Bruno Marchand. Energy and habitat issues will be the centerpiece of research that he plans to lead during the four coming years in collaboration with various ENAC laboratories.

Modeling electricity markets: a challenge for the future

Published:25.07.11 — A research platform partially funded by the Swiss Federal Office of Energy has been established at EPFL. It will provide a comprehensive tool for optimizing electricity management and commercialization within Switzerland and with neighboring countries.

EU approves EPFL's criteria for sustainable biofuels

Published:21.07.11 — The standard established by the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) at EPFL has recently been recognized as proof of compliance with the EU biofuel’s mandate.

Deep below the Deepwater Horizon oil spill

Published:18.07.11 — For the first time, scientists gathered oil and gas directly as it escaped from a deep ocean wellhead — that of the damaged Deepwater Horizon oil rig. What they found allows a better understanding of how pollution is partitioned and transported in the depths of the Gulf of Mexico and permits superior estimation of the environmental impact of escaping oil, allowing for a more precise evaluation of previously estimated repercussions on seafloor life in the future.

Eight new nominations

Published:12.07.11 — On Friday, July 8, 2011, the ETH board announced the nominations and internal promotions of eight professors, including a professor who has been appointed to the Bertarelli Foundation chair in EPFL’s Center for Neuroprosthetics.

From raindrop to flood: studying water in an Alpine valley

Published:11.07.11 — EPFL’s Environmental Fluid Mechanics Laboratory (EFLUM) is starting a new field campaign in the Val Ferret. They’re collecting data to study how the environment influences flood rates in mountain valleys.

How will Swiss radioactive waste be disposed of?

Published:07.07.11 — If Switzerland does indeed abandon nuclear energy within the time-frame announced by the Swiss Confederation, the question of the burial and disposal of the accumulated waste needs to be addressed. EPFL’s Laboratory of Soil Mechanics has been working on this issue over the last 10 years. Apart from its geo-mechanical expertise, the LMS creates the materials – and develops the tools for – the verification of systems of multiple barriers, capable of containing the radioactivity for five hundred to a thousand years.