Thesis Director: Prof. B. E. Ferreira De Sousa Correia,
\r\nChemistry and Chemical Engineering doctoral program
\r\nThesis Nr. 11408
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\r\nTo take part in the public defense, please contact directly the speaker
The two-week event will broadly focus on spectral geometry, hyperbolic surfaces, and number theory, with the primary goal of fostering connections between these areas. By bringing together young researchers and engaging them in ongoing discussions around these topics, we aim to encourage collaboration and stimulate progress across these fields.
\r\nThe first week will feature mini-courses delivered by young participants, providing an opportunity for early-career researchers to share their expertise.
\r\nThe second week will consist of research-level talks by experts, highlighting recent developments in the field.
Thesis Director: Prof. Y. Bellouard,
\r\nAdvanced Manufacturing doctoral program
\r\nThesis Nr. 11612
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\r\nTo take part in the public defense, please contact directly the speaker
Are you finding it difficult to come up with a truly innovative idea for your next grant application? Do you ever feel stuck in an experiment, in familiar ways of thinking, even when you know there must be new angles to explore?
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\r\nScience progress moves between two complementary modes: Day Science, the rigorous testing of ideas, and Night Science, the creative process where those ideas first emerge. Indeed, what we call the scientific method tells us what to do once we have a hypothesis – but where do these hypotheses come from in the first place? François Jacob famously called this part the realm of ‘Night Science’.
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\r\nDrawing on the Night Science training framework developed by Profs Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher, this workshop will introduce thinking tools and exercises to help you foster exploratory thinking, interdisciplinarity and a general attitude of openness towards new ideas applied to your own research challenges. This course is provided by a certified Night Science trainer from the EPFL Research Office.
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\r\nThis interactive workshop is designed specifically for postdoctoral researchers who want to:\r\n
Recent advances in foundation models are extending AI beyond perception and language understanding toward embodied systems that can perceive, reason, and act in the physical world. This transition is accelerating the development of vision-language-action (VLA) models and robot foundation models that aim to provide robots with more general, adaptive, and deployable intelligence.
\r\nThis talk presents recent progress toward self-working humanoid robots, covering key ideas in embodied AI such as multimodal understanding, long-horizon planning, action generation, and real-world deployment. It also introduces recent research from Seoul National University BI Lab and AI Institute on human-robot interaction, personalization, continual adaptation, and language-conditioned robot learning, together with the Habilis framework developed at Tommoro Robotics for deployable humanoid intelligence.
\r\nFinally, the talk discusses a future architecture for self-working humanoids that integrates perception, memory, reasoning, planning, and action into a unified learning system. The central theme is that while large language models enabled machines to communicate, vision-language-action models will enable machines to work autonomously in the real world.
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\r\nByoung-Tak Zhang's biography
\r\nPresent:
\r\nProfessor of Computer Science, Seoul National University,
\r\nDirector of the Humanoid AI Robot Center (HARC),
\r\nChairman of the K-Humanoid Alliance (Korean Government)
\r\n2019-2025:
\r\nFounding Director of SNU AI Institute (AIIS)
\r\n2007-2008:
\r\nVisiting Professor, Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology
\r\n2003-2004:
\r\nVisiting Professor, MIT CS&AI Lab (CSAIL)
\r\n1992-1995:
\r\nResearch Associate, German National Research Center for Computer Science (GMD)
\r\n1988-1992:
\r\nPhD in Computer Science, University of Bonn
\r\n1982-1988:
\r\nBS and MS in Computer Science, Seoul National University
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The Kawada Group primarily focuses on bridge and building design and manufacturing, but through a chance encounter resulting from joint research with the University of Tokyo, we have been conducting research and development on humanoids for 26 years. Today, we have sold over 1,000 upper-body dual-arm robots, NEXTAGE, both domestically and internationally, contributing to factory automation. I will introduce my company and the history of humanoid development at our company.
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\r\nYuichiro Kawasumi is a Chief Engineer at Kawada Technologies, Inc., specializing in humanoid software and social implementation. He began his career developing the HRP-2 series with AIST, establishing core humanoid control expertise. This led to the successful spin-out of NEXTAGE, a torso-type robot that transformed high-end research into practical factory automation. Building on this real-world success, Kawasumi recently launched a project to develop next-generation legged robots in late 2025. Returning to his roots in full-body mobility, he aims to pioneer the next era of humanoid automation to solve critical global labor shortages.
EPFL invites its staff and doctoral students to exhibit their artistic works (paintings, ceramics, framed works on paper, textile art, sculpture, mixed media; no photographs or videos) as part of the CREApoly exhibition. This exhibition offers a space for free, creative, and non-judgmental expression where you can share your artistic vision.
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\r\nA community-focused initiative organized as part of the 2026 Health days and Les Culturelles Festival.
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\r\nPractical Information:\r\n