La Doctorale - 10 Research Prizes reward EPFL Researchers

Zoom on these awards and their 2025 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, this prize was awarded to Rahul Gupta for his thesis “Methods for Grid-aware Operation and Planning of Active Distribution Networks”.
• 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 Oguzhan Fatih Kar for his thesis “Scaling the modalities in multimodal foundation models” and to Nathan Ronceray for his thesis “Optical imaging of molecules and their dynamics from surfaces to nanoscale confinement”.
• EPFL Doctorate Awards: established in 1993 to distinguish the works of doctorates of exceptional quality and arouse vocations of particularly qualified researchers, this prize rewards three candidates having written a remarkable thesis for its originality, the impact of the results and the presentation. This year, this prize was awarded to Steffen Schneider for his thesis “Robust machine learning for neuroscientific inference” and to Bahar Taskesen for her thesis “Reliable Data-Driven Decision-Making through Optimal Transport”.
• 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 Nick Sauerwein for his thesis “A Cavity-Microscope for Quantum Simulations with Locally-Controllable All-to-All Interactions”.
• 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 Julien Gacon for his thesis “Scalable Quantum Algorithms for Noisy Quantum Computers".
• 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 sciences and technology. This year, this prize was awarded to Philippe Schwaller for his research project “AI-Augmented Chemical Science through Language Models”.
• Ville de Lausanne Award: The prize, attributed every three years, distinguishes innovative and high-level research in the exact sciences, natural sciences or biomedical sciences. This year, this prize was awarded to Monika Feldmann for her thesis “Supercell Thunderstorms in the Alpine Region - From Weather Radar Observations to Idealized Modeling”.
• ZKS Award: 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 Christian Wolff for his research project “Highly efficient next generation multijunction solar cells”.

These prizes have been awarded by the EPFL Research Awards Commission.

For more details, please visit our webpage.

During this event, the Rodolphe and Renée Haenny Foundation Prize was awarded to Dr. Arnaud Magrez.