science wire

ETH Zurich and EPFL want to work with partners from politics, science and industry to push innovative storage and transport solutions for renewable energy carriers.

Unconscious biases are formed by the culture and society we live in, along with our education and personal experiences.

Elythor, an EPFL spin-off, has developed a new drone whose wing shape can adapt to wind conditions and flight position in real time, reducing the drone's energy consumption.

EPFL, the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR), the Geneva Graduate Institute and the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform have announced the launch of a PeaceTech Alliance.

The Canopy Pavilion uses hundreds of different interlinked panels to explore physical and mechanical properties never before employed in architecture.

Opening today, the new exhibition of EPFL Pavilions "Lighten Up! On Biology and Time" uses the lens of art to explore the connection of living organisms with the natural cycle of light and dark.

New imaging methods are being developed and adopted at a rapid pace in both research and industry. To equip EPFL graduates with the skills they'll need, the School's Center for Imaging is introducing a minor specifically in this area starting in the 2023-2024 school year.

UN International Day of Forests on 21 March is the perfect opportunity to showcase some of the important forest research being done at EPFL.

The environmental sustainability of up-and-coming technology is among the issues addressed by EPFL's International Risk Governance Center (IRGC). The Center aims to develop a number of best practices and decision-making guidelines in this area. Much of the new technology coming out of labs today is directly intended to protect the environment, whether by fighting climate change, preserving biodiversity or improving sustainability.

For the last four years at EPFL, a Master's course jointly run by the College of Management of Technology and the School of Engineering has been winning over students seeking a course that meets the needs of local industry.

AI chatbot ChatGPT exploded onto the scene in November 2022. It can write essays, WordPress plugins and even pass an MBA exam - yet scientists still don't fully understand how these general artificial intelligence programs work.

To build awareness about the importance of oceans, Sailowtech, a student association, has launched a project to develop low-tech methods for collecting data at sea.

It's International Women's Day 2023 and this year the focus is on innovation, technological change and education in the digital age for gender equality.

The headquarters of Vaudoise Insurance in Lausanne, designed by Swiss architect Jean Tschumi, is the subject of a detailed monument study to guide restoration work.

Three scientific prizes will be awarded this year by the Leenaards Foundation, including two for research carried out in partnership with EPFL.

Since 2016, the Swiss Cancer Center Léman provides a space for scientists and clinicians from across the Lake Geneva region to pool their efforts, share insights and work together on innovative cancer treatments.

On January 31, the EPFL Spacecraft Team's onboard computer Bunny was launched in California, USA, hosted on a D'Orbit spacecraft as part of Starlink's 2-6 mission.

A recent publication explores the unique history of dormitories from the Middle Ages to present day.

Researchers have developed a novel approach to network analysis that allows them to reveal and interpret, for the first time, interactions among multiple variables in data from neuroscience, economics, and epidemiology. Many phenomena - brain signals, stock prices, or COVID hospitalizations, for example - can be studied using time series data, which are collected as repeated measurements over a given time interval.

1. EPFL mathematician Maryna Viazovska is awarded a Fields Medal In July, Maryna Viazovska, who holds the Chair of Number Theory at EPFL, has been awarded a Fields Medal , widely considered to be the highest accolade in her discipline and described as the Nobel Prize of Mathematics. At 37 years of age, Viazovska has thus become only the second female Fields Medalist - after Maryam Mirzakhani in 2014.

EPFL professor Jacques Fellay, who served on the Swiss National Covid-19 Task Force, has been selected for a new advisory committee that the government set up recently so policymakers and scientists can continue their joint efforts. The pandemic did have a silver lining. At least that was the case in Switzerland, where the public-health crisis opened up the lines of communication between policymakers and scientists like never before.

With its Solutions4Sustainability initiative, EPFL aims to channel its community members' knowledge and skills towards the goal of promoting more environmentally friendly lifestyles.

A consortium of Swiss research institutes, led by EPFL, has begun working on UrbanTwin to make an artificial intelligence driven and ecologically sensitive model of the energy, water and waste systems of the town of Aigle. The aim: to help boost sustainability. Twins are a fascinating phenomenon: observing how identical twins, even those separated at birth, can resemble each other in appearance, character, ability and personal taste is astounding.

Researchers have teamed up with Dartfish and the Lausanne Hockey Club to push the boundaries of sports-performance analysis by applying computer vision and machine-learning technology to action on the ice. While there's no substitute for long hours of training, sports video analysis has become a must-have in the race for medals.

Uzufly's technology uses aerial imaging to generate 3D models of cities and regions with advanced precision, enabling urban planners to incorporate full-scale designs of all types of architectural and urban structures.

Chalets have been widely adopted as the standard form of architecture for mountain homes - but according to Patrick Giromini, an architect and lecturer at EPFL, it's worth taking a close look at why.

Olivier Lalancette, an EPFL Master's student in architecture, has come up with some development proposals for the Brig-Visp-Naters conurbation.

Scientists at the Swiss Plasma Center at EPFL, in collaboration with Beyond Gravity and with the support of the ESA, have developed a slip ring assembly that can more than triple the operational voltage of new-generation, high-voltage satellites.

Ambrogio Fasoli, EPFL's Associate Vice President for Research and Director of the Swiss Plasma Center, and Caroline Vandevyver, the Head of EPFL's Research Office, spoke with us about the importance of research integrity, the challenges in this area and EPFL's positions on the issues. According to Ambrogio Fasoli and Caroline Vandevyver, education and communication are key to promoting research integrity and earning the trust of industry and civil society.

The recently completed first edition of the KimCheese program challenged students from Switzerland and Korea to design solutions to everyday obstacles faced by senior citizens in both countries. The KimCheese program is led by College of Humanities (CDH) lecturer Marc Laperrouza, who also initiated the China Hardware Innovation Camp ( CHIC ) and the India Switzerland Social Innovation Camp ( INSSINC ).

The new exhibition produced by EPFL Pavilions transforms the scientific inquiry of astrophysics into sensory and emotional experiences.

For his Master's project, architecture student Jeremy Morris assessed the life cycle of building materials in Vaud Canton.

The manufacturing industry is going through a period of profound change, driven in part by the advent of 3D printing and other advanced technologies. In order to support Swiss industry at this critical juncture, EPFL and CSEM have joined forces to create the Micromanufacturing Science & Engineering Center (M2C), a new focal point for pure research, technology transfer and everything in between.

As the new academic year kicks into gear, we spoke to Simone Deparis, the executive director of EPFL's Propedeutic Center (CePro), which is aiming to raise the first-year pass rate (currently 51.5%) without lowering standards.

Today EPFL inaugurated its new heating plant, which has the capacity to heat and cool the Lausanne campus solely by drawing water from Lake Geneva and recovering excess heat from a connected data center.

SUMMER SERIES - Master's project (11). EPFL student Antoine Madrona helped develop an algorithm that, after being trained on data from many different hospitals, can improve stroke diagnosis - all while protecting patient confidentiality.

Summer series - Master's project (10). Jérémie Pochon has built a test bench for evaluating the type of motor that could one day drive the Hyperloop transportation system. The Hyperloop holds the promise of low-carbon transportation that's fast, efficient and affordable. But before passengers can be enclosed inside a pod and propelled along a vacuum tube at mind-boggling speeds, there's a lot of modeling, simulation, testing and validation work to be done - starting at a pilot scale.

Plants use light waves from only a portion of the spectrum for photosynthesis - the remainder can be recovered and used to generate solar power.

Zebrafish eggs are among the most commonly used model organisms in genetic, developmental and toxicology research.