EPFL’s Associate Campus in Neuchâtel within the Microcity innovation cluster is much more than just a place for study and research. It is a vibrant intellectual hub, where passion for science and engineering combines with the search for innovative solutions, and reinforces the positioning of the Canton of Neuchâtel as a leader in innovation.
Opening of a new laboratory on EPFL’s Associate Campus in Neuchâtel
On March 1, 2023, Prof. Daryl Yee took up his position as Assistant Professor Tenure Track and established the Laboratory for Chemistry of Materials and Manufacturing, the ALCHEMY Laboratory on EPFL’s Associate Campus in Neuchâtel. The laboratory’s mission is to develop advanced functional materials for all capable of meeting societal challenges in healthcare, energy and climate change.
To this end, Prof. Daryl Yee and his team seek to integrate molecular design, materials science and advanced manufacturing. They are interested in developing accessible chemistries and processing strategies that can enable the fabrication of a wide variety of materials with complex microstructures and properties that can be integrated into advanced functional devices. His group is currently focusing on the development of new polymer-based methods polymer-based methods for ceramic, metal and composite printing; the design of polymers properties.
The 12 professors and 3 Maîtres d’Enseignement et de Recherche (MER) play an active role in training the country’s future engineers.
training the country’s future engineers. In addition to teaching Bachelor’s and Master’s courses in microtechnology, robotics, mechanical engineering and electrical engineering, they train doctoral students in their laboratories and welcome semester and Master’s project students, as well as interns from external universities.
In 2023, there will be 101 doctoral students, 77 EPFL students in semester and master’s projects, 17 students registered at other Swiss or foreign universities and temporarily staying at EPFL, and 23 doctoral theses defended.
- Laurie-Lou SENAUD (PV-LAB) has been awarded the Asea Brown Boveri Ltd (ABB) prize for her work on optics and electronics of high-efficiency heterojunction crystalline silicon solar cells, enabling efficiencies in excess of 25% to be achieved with industrialisable processes.
- Ernesto GRIBAUDO, PhD from the Galatea laboratory, won first prize for the best student presentation at the SPIE Photonics West conference in San Francisco, USA (LASE Conference on Frontiers in Ultrafast Optics) on the theme of femtosecond lasers and their applications.
- Ebrar OZKALAY (PV-LAB) was awarded the prize for best poster “Effect of satellite derived insolation data on the accuracy of Performance Ration estimates”, Swiss Photovoltaic 2023 Conference.
- Pieter VLUGTER, PhD from the Galatea laboratory, was awarded “the EDAM Doctoral Thesis Distinction 2022” at the EDAM Day 2023@EPFL for his thesis on the thermomechanical properties of glasses modified with femtosecond lasers.
- Luca ANTOGNINI, PhD student at the PV-LAB laboratory, received the best thesis award from the Photonics Doctoral School for the quality of his thesis entitled “Contact Design for Silicon Heterojunction Solar Cells”.
- Luca PEDRO received the OMEGA Prize Student Award for his master’s thesis entitled “Design and fabrication of a flexible pivot with minimized parasitic motion and maximized radial rigidity”, carried out at the Instant-Lab under the supervision of Prof. Simon Henein.
Every year, EPFL organizes courses and workshops for children on its various campuses, with the aim of getting them interested in science and engineering.
In 2023, EPFL’s Science Promotion Department, in collaboration with the Canton of Neuchâtel’s Department of Economic Affairs and EPFL Neuchâtel, organized the robotics courses “Robots are for girls” and “Building and programming a robot”.
The Rollomatic, Ciposa, Mikron and IMA companies provided financial support for these courses.
For a whole semester (Saturdays), the 48 participants aged 11 to 13 learned to design, build and program their robot.
For 9 to 11 year-olds, the Science Promotion Service, on the premises of EPFL Neuchâtel, offered the “Internet & Code for Kids” course.
offered the “Internet & Code for Girls” course. 20 girls each created their own website and their first graphic game with Scratch over 11 Saturdays.
The course ended with a presentation of certificates to the participants, proof of their efforts and new skills.
It was also an opportunity for the teaching staff to encourage them to get involved in scientific and technical training.
In 2023, EPFL Neuchâtel Campus hosted 70 internal and external events bringing together scientific and regional personalities. Conferences, colloquium and symposium were organized around specific themes, bringing together different players in our society to discuss challenges and opportunities in various fields such as health, the environment and technology.
Last year’s highlights included:
- The Neighbour’s Party, held on November 3 in collaboration with our partners at the University of Neuchâtel and Microcity SA, which enabled fruitful exchanges between participants, while offering the opportunity to discover the activities of each institution.
- SAMCE 2023 (Swiss Advanced Manufacturing Community Events), held on September 21, provides a platform for bringing together and connecting scientists from all horizons, with the aim of building a strong advanced manufacturing community in Switzerland.
These events enrich the academic and cultural environment of the Neuchâtel Campus, fostering collaboration, the exchange of ideas and networking between participants.
EPFL supports innovation and the transfer of research results from its laboratories to industry, with the aim of creating new products and services. Technology transfer can be achieved in a variety of ways:
Through research projects carried out in collaboration with established companies, through the creation of start-ups from our laboratories, or through licensing agreements.
The contribution of EPFL Neuchâtel laboratories to technology transfer is significant and benefits the economic fabric of Neuchâtel.
EPFL Neuchâtel laboratories filed 118 patents and executed 45 licenses between 2009 and 2023.
- More than 100 collaborative projects with industry were carried out between 2018 and 2022, a third of them with a company based in the canton of Neuchâtel.
- 15 startups have been created since the birth of EPFL’s Associate Campus in Neuchâtel, between 2009 and 2023, including 8 established in the canton.
- 2 new startups in gestation should be incorporated during the 1st quarter of 2024
Among our priorities, we will continue to develop the Microfabrication Research Center (M2C) and make this platform more widely available to our academic and industrial partners, offering research and development opportunities to strengthen our leading position in the field of microfabrication.
We will continue to promote the organization of events for our scientific staff and partners in our building, convinced that we are thus contributing to exchanges within the Microcity Innovation Cluster and to the vitality of the Canton’s research and economy.
Together, we are ready to meet the challenges ahead and seize the opportunities that lie ahead, in our constant drive to develop EPFL’s Associate Campus in Neuchâtel.