The École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) is one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology and is located in Lausanne, Switzerland. The school was founded by the Swiss Federal Government with the stated mission to: The sister institution in the German-speaking part of Switzerland is the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETH Zürich or ETHZ). Associated with several specialised research institutes, the two sister institutes form the ETH Domain, which is directly dependent on the Federal Department of Home Affairs. EPFL is ranked among the top universities in the world. Founded in 1853 as a private school under the name École Spéciale de Lausanne, it became the technical department of the public Académie de Lausanne in 1869. When the latter was reorganized and acquired the status of a university in 1890, the technical faculty changed its name to École d'Ingénieurs de l'Université de Lausanne. In 1946, it was renamed the École polytechnique de l'Université de Lausanne (EPUL).
Light-based production of drug-discovery molecules
Photoelectrochemical (PEC) cells are widely studied for the conversion of solar energy into chemical fuels. They use photocathodes and photoanodes to "split" water into hydrogen and oxygen respectively. PEC cells can work ...
Feb 18, 2019
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New device simplifies measurement of fluoride contamination in water
Adding fluoride to water is common practice in a number of countries, including the U.S., Australia, Brazil, Malaysia, India and Vietnam. In low concentrations (below 1.5 mg/L), it can prevent tooth decay and even strengthen ...
Next-generation optics in just two minutes of cooking time
Optical circuits are set to revolutionize the performance of many devices. Not only are they 10 to 100 times faster than electronic circuits, but they also consume a lot less power. Within these circuits, light waves are ...
Scientists build the smallest optical frequency comb to-date
Optical frequency combs are laser sources whose spectrum consists of a series of discrete, equally spaced frequency lines that can be used for precise measurements. In the last two decades, they have become a major tool for ...
Gummy-like robots that could help prevent disease
Human tissues experience a variety of mechanical stimuli that can affect their ability to carry out their physiological functions, such as protecting organs from injury. The controlled application of such stimuli to living ...
Intuition and failure are valuable ingredients in chemistry
When researchers make a new discovery, they tend to only publish the results of their successful experiments. But just as informative are all the experiments that didn't work – the failed trials and incorrect hypotheses, ...
Using artificial intelligence to save bees
A beekeeper teamed up with the Signal Processing Laboratory 5 and a group of EPFL students to develop an app that counts the number of Varroa mites in beehives. This parasite is one of the two main threats – along with ...
How transcription factors explore the genome
Transcription factors (TFs) are proteins that regulate the transcription of genes, which is the first step in making a protein. The way TFs work is by searching the entire genome and binding to specific regions that regulate ...
New method to determine how safe buildings are after an earthquake
Deciding when it's safe for a building's residents to move back in after an earthquake is a major challenge and responsibility for civil engineers. Not only do they have to evaluate whether the building could collapse, but ...
An integrative approach to studying lipid biology
The proteins that manage lipids in the cell are notoriously hard to study. Combining structural, biochemical, and computational studies, scientists at EPFL and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have now discovered how a ...
