Paralympian Athlete

Marcel Hug

The two-time Paralympic and nine-time World Championships gold medallist, Marcel Hug, alias « The Silver Bullet », is a Paralympian athlete from Switzerland competing in category T54 wheelchair racing events. 

From an old racing wheelchair to the world championships, Marcel has built confidence and strength. He profits from his talk to share his vision on how to become a better version of oneself through the difficulties and how little changes at a time can make the difference. He would develop how to manage the perception other individuals have on you and how to go onwards independently from the circumstances.

Astronaut

Claude Nicollier

A former ESA Astronaut and a member of the Swiss Space Center in Lausanne, Claude Nicollier became the first Swiss to ever travel to space in 1992. He attended four Space Shuttle missions and in his last one made a spacewalk. After his flights he stayed and work with ESA( European Space Agency) at the Astronaut Office Extravehicular Activity Branch until 2007. From this date he became professor at the EPFL in spatial technology. Claude dedicated his life to science and to the spreading of knowledge. It is in that vein that he accepted to share his experiences with TEDxEcublens

Entrepreneur

Jane Royston

Holder of the title Swiss Business Woman of the Year, Jane Royston is also an individual member of the Swiss National Academy of Engineering and has been a member of the Swiss Science Council since 2016. She currently serves on the boards of several high-tech companies and charitable foundations. After selling her IT business, she committed herself in teaching entrepreneurship and became the first named chair at the EPFL.

 Jane shares with us a journey in the entrepreneurial world through the eyes of a woman.

Paul Habert

EPFL Student

Paul Habert is a student at the EPFL in master, which is axed on finance and datascience. Outside of his classes, he loves to spend time playing tennis and do some outside running. Having ecology and economy as old passions, he has grown interests in mixing them together, particularly by taking into account ESG (environmental, social, and governance) criteria which constitute the main challenges we have today. His exchange in Denmark was the moment of awakening for the interests which has led him to his talk : how ecology and finances can work together to be more environmentally-friendly. In other words, how and what are we doing to concretely change our economy, ways of production, living in a more sustainable manner while keeping it connected to the financial markets and its realities.

Anton Zeller

Founder of AZNA

​Anton Zeller is a bachelor student at the HEC in entrepreneurship and is looking to deepen his knowledge with a master at the EPFL. During his first semester at HEC Lausanne he created AZNA. Because he realized how a group of competent and intrinsically motivated people can do, its potential. That’s why he promotes a very horizontal structure in his start-up, to take advantage of the best human beings to develop Swiss Made and sustainable technologies. In consequence of the pandemic, he took the opportunity to reinvest the huge freed time in these projects. Why ? “Because I cannot imagine a world for the next decades without systematic sustainable decisions. I feel that including the local economy and the social environment in the decision-making process is the solution for a better world.” Having the will to make things happen on a large scale, is what gives a redline to all his projects and is an essential explanation for his hunger to accumulate more knowledge.

Suzanne De Treville

Professor at Lausanne University

Suzanne de Treville is Professor of Operations Management at HEC at the University of Lausanne and serves as co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Operations Management. She holds a DBA from the Harvard Business School. Her primary research areas fall in the intersection of supply-chain management and quantitative finance. This combination has allowed her lab OpLab at UNIL to create decision tools to aid managers to calculate the value of responsiveness. These tools, already credited with aiding managers to decide when local production pays off, have gained substantial new attention during the COVID-PANDEMIC that has uncovered fragilities and dependencies that are created when supply-chains lose their responsiveness due to being extended globally. OpLab's research results have shown that the value of responsiveness can be surprisingly high, more than enough to cover the cost premium required for local production in a high-cost area like Switzerland. The decision tools allow managers to see clearly which products to produce locally, and how to design the local capacity to maximize profit. Research results also demonstrate that responsiveness not only helps to match supply with demand---even under crisis conditions---but also supports innovation, sustainability, and creation of desirable jobs.

Corentin Fivet

Professor at EPFL

A key contributor to the adoption of an industrial circular economy in the construction sector, Corentin Fivet is Professor of Architecture and Structural Design at EPFL. Sustainability challenges along with the handling of complexity are the very heart of Corentin’s research and education activities. Coupling Architecture and Engineering also allows him to think and forge innovative systems and construction processes in concordance with a more economical use of resources.

Simon Prêcheur-Liarena 

EPFL Student

Simon Prêcheur Llarena is a student at the EPFL. He has always been passionate about science, engineering, and music. Most of all, he loves the act of creation, because it is a common factor among all these fields in which different forms of creativity take place. He made the choice to study an engineering carrer at EPFL, in Microtechnic, and is now in Space engineering. The music has always found a special place in his life and has not left him for years. More than a hobby, it has become a field of expression he wants to investigate in all its depth. Therefore, the link between astronomy and music was of great interest to him and was almost natural.
In this conjunction of interest he wants, after his graduation, to devote all his time to music composition, assert his skills and explore unknown prospects.
He had the chance to meet astrophysicist and enthousiast pianist and singer Laurent Eyer at the university choir, which encounter led to the birth of the project he will be presenting today.

Gregor Hasler

Psychotherapist

Professor Dr. Gregor Hasler is a Swiss psychiatrist, psychotherapist and neuroscientist and bestselling author. He recently became chair of psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University of Fribourg (2019). His researches revolve around stress, resilience, eating and mood disorders. In his talk, Dr. Hasler approaches the topic of mood regulation and demonstrates its importance and implementation in everyday life.