10 Research Prizes reward EPFL Researchers

Zoom on these awards and their 2021 prize-winners:

• ABB Award: created by the house Asea Brown Boveri Ltd., this prize rewards an original scientific work in the domains of energy, production, transport, distribution and the use of energy under all its forms or computing, automatic and telecommunications. This year, the prize was awarded to Michael Graf for his thesis “2D nanopores: fabrication, energy harvesting and field-effect sensing”.
• Chorafas Award: offered by the Foundation Dimitris. Chorafas since 2001, this prize aims at encouraging exceptional works in the domains of applied research. This year, the prize was granted to Sai Praneeth Karimireddy for his research project “Optimization algorithms for collaborative machine learning” and to Andreas Leber for his research project “Soft functional fibers for mechanical sensing and actuation”.
• EPFL Doctorates Awards: established in 1993 to distinguish the works of doctorates of exceptional quality and arouse vocations of particularly qualified researchers, this prize rewards two candidates having written a remarkable thesis for its originality, the impact of the results and the presentation. This year, the prize was awarded to Alberto Ciarrocchi for his thesis “Electronic, excitonic and magnetic properties of two-dimensional heterostructures”, and to Junqiu Liu for his thesis "Silicon Nitride Nonlinear Integrated Photonics".
• Gilbert Hausmann Award: this prize rewards a PhD student having completed an EPFL PhD thesis in the field of mechanical engineering, electricity or physics. The prize-winning project should stand out through its excellence, particularly in terms of originality and the prospects which it opens. This year, the prize was awarded to Antonino Caizzone for his thesis “An Ultra Low-Noise Micropower PPG Sensor".
• IBM Research Award: sponsored by IBM Research GmbH Zurich Research Laboratory, rewards a doctoral thesis or a master project undertaken at the EPFL. It is aimed at promoting research in computational sciences and recognizes outstanding projects developing advanced modelling and simulation methods or their applications to important topics in diverse areas of science (physics, chemistry, and biology) and engineering. This year, the prize was awarded to Pablo Miguel Piaggi for his thesis “Entropy as a tool for crystal discovery".
• Professor René Wasserman Award: sponsored by the family Wasserman, founder of the group Eutectic-Castolin and TeroLab Service Management SA, it rewards either a Doctoral Thesis or a Post-doctoral Research, undertaken at the EPFL. It aims at distinguishing innovative and high-level research in the field of new materials. This year, the prize was awarded to Antimo Marrazzo for his thesis "Electronic Structure and Topology of Novel Materials".
• University Latsis Prize: offered by the Foundation Latsis Internationale, a non-profit public institution created in 1975, this prize rewards a research work which makes an important contribution and an international innovation in the field of the sciences and of the technology. This year, the prize was awarded to Bruno Correia for his research project “Computational design of vaccine antigens for pandemic preparedness”.
• ZKS Prize: offered by the Zeno Karl Schindler Foundation created in 2005, this prize rewards a post-doctoral research project which makes an important contribution or an international innovation in the field of the sciences of the environment or the technologies having a positive impact on the environment or the sustainable development. This year, the prize was awarded to Jovana Milic for her research project “Hybrid Supramolecular Materials for Renewable Energy Conversion in Photovoltaics”.

These prizes have been awarded by the EPFL Research Commission. From autumn 2021, this commission has been replaced by the Awards Commission; the coordination still being assured by the Research Office.

All the pictures of the awards ceremony are available in the EPFL Media Library.

For more details, please visit our webpage: https://www.epfl.ch/research/awards.