10 Research Prizes reward EPFL Researchers

Zoom on these awards and their prize-winners 2015:

• 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 (odd years) or computing, automatic and telecommunications (even years). This year, this prize was awarded to Amalie Dualeh for her thesis “Analysis of Key Electronic, Optical and Structural Parameters in Mesoscopic Solid-State Solar Cells” and to Bo Jiang for his thesis “Ceramics based technologies for high-temperature micro-reactors”.

• 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, this prize was granted to Momchil Minkov for his research project “Modeling and Optimization of Photonic Crystal Structures” and to Mingfu Shao for his research project “Models and Algorithms for Comparative Genomics”.

• 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, this prize was awarded to Lukas Kull for his thesis “High-Speed CMOS ADC Design for 100 Gb/s Communication Systems” and to Gilles Puy for his thesis “Efficient compressive sampling strategies and novel reconstruction methods with applications in MRI”.

• “IBM Research” Prize: given by IBM Research GmbH Zurich Research Laboratory, this prize rewards a doctoral thesis or a project of Master's degree of EPFL which distinguishes itself in the domains of the engineering and the science at the level of the modelling and of the simulation. This year, this prize was awarded to Reza Parhizkarfor his thesis “Euclidean Distance Matrices: Properties, Algorithms and Applications”.

• 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, this prize was awarded to Hugo Dil for his research project “Influence of spin-orbit interaction (SOI) on the electronic structure of novel materials”.

• Wasserman Prize: offered by the family of Professor René Wasserman, founder of the group Eutectic-Castolin and TeroLab Service Management limited company, this prize rewards works making a contribution of high value in the theory and the applications of the sciences of materials. This year, this prize was awarded to Christian Monachon for his thesis « Thermal Boundary Conductance between metals and dielectrics ».

• 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, this prize was awarded to Endre Horváth for his research project “Swoxid: Next generation filters for air -and water purifiers”.

These prizes are awarded by the EPFL Research Commission; the coordination being assured by the Research Office. For more details, please visit our webpage: http://go.epfl.ch/awards.