EPFL School of Engineering Advisory Board meets in Lausanne

Composed of 14 members representing leaders from academia and Swiss industry in equal measure, the STI Advisory Board usually meets once a year to provide the school’s management with feedback and advice on strategy and operations. Due to COVID, the meeting held on April 28^th at the Hotel Starling, next to EPFL’s main campus in Lausanne, was the Board’s first since cancelation of the meeting originally planned for March 2020.

The Dean of Engineering Ali H. Sayed kicked off the day with an overview of the school’s activities, accomplishments, and initiatives in the intervening years. His presentation highlighted the increasing gender balance in the school, the recruitment of outstanding faculty members, and the research and educational strategies for the school. He also commented on interactions with industry, the launch of a new shared institute on neurotechnology, the merging of the institutes of electrical and microengineering, and the rise in the rankings of the school’s institutes with two of them now placed among the top ten worldwide and as the highest ranked at EPFL. The Dean also shared information about ongoing plans to mitigate some of the challenges in relation to the continuous growth in student numbers and the demands on budget in support of our research and educational activities. The dean’s talk was followed by presentations from several senior and junior faculty members, who provided accounts of the latest research, newly hired collaborators, new master programs, and recently launched centers and institutes in their respective domains. Board members then posed questions and commented on the various topics discussed.

In the afternoon, board members had the opportunity to visit various facilities, including the new Discovery Learning Center (DLL), EPFL’s Innovation Park, and several STI institute spaces. The board regrouped afterward to discuss and share their feedback with the school’s management.