During a one-week Summer Workshop in Central London, students will explore drawing as a fundamental tool in architecture and engineering, engaging with the site as both a built environment and a historically transformed place. Developed in collaboration with Drawing Matter, London, the workshop integrates hands-on drawing with research into the Drawing Matter Collection, a unique archive of architectural drawings.
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\r\nProject Team 2025
\r\nDr. Patricia Guaita, architect, lecturer, IA ENAC EPFL
\r\nRaffael Baur, architect and external lecturer ENAC EPFL
\r\nNiall Hobhouse, collector and writer, Drawing Matter Director
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\r\nInvited expert
\r\nMatthew Wells, Lecturer in Architectural Studies at University of Manchester
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\r\n![\"\"](\"//memento.epfl.ch/public/upload/fckeditorimage/40/0d/ed493c2f.jpg\")
We are honoured to welcome Dr. Xavier Maeder, a leading expert in small-scale mechanics and characterisation techniques, who will give a lecture entitled:
\r\nBeyond Nanoindentation: Advanced Combined Approaches for Mechanical Characterization
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\r\nPlease note that this special event takes place during the 2026 Nanoindentation Course, which runs from 26–28 August 2026. More information about the course is available here.
\r\nThis event is open to all, so please feel free to share the invitation with colleagues, collaborators, students, or anyone else who may be interested in attending. Anyone who would like to attend can register using this form.
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\r\nWe look forward to welcoming you to EPFL for what promises to be an excellent opportunity to learn, exchange ideas, and network with scientists, engineers, industrial partners, and students working in related fields.
Self-leadership is the process by which a person becomes more comfortable with who they are and what they want, allowing them to fulfil their potential and build a strong foundation from which to take daily decisions –both professional and personal.
\r\nSelf-leadership enables more effective communication, enhanced fulfilment and more balanced decisions. Both men and women can benefit from learning and practicing self-leadership to improve their professional and personal lives.
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\r\nHow this workshop will help you:
\r\nWe will explore the topic of self-leadership by addressing self-awareness, self-confidence and self-efficacy. At the same time, this workshop will provide a space where you can exchange ideas and strategies with others on dealing with and succeeding in the situations that you face in your current work environment and your life.
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\r\nThe format of the workshop is highly interactive and practical, involving case studies, small group work and discussion sessions. Participants will be actively involved in the course, discussing their own life and leadership experiences and self-reflecting in a guided process. The increased awareness and the tools they will discover can be readily used in daily life to enhance their leadership, success and satisfaction.
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\r\nDay 1+2: from 9.00 am to 5.30 pm
\r\nDay 3: from 9.00 am to 12.30 pm
You can apply to participate and find all the relevant information (speakers, abstracts, program,...) on the event website: https://www.cecam.org/workshop-details/multi-scale-and-multi-purpose-simulations-of-dna-the-importance-of-data-1484.
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\r\nRegistration is required to attend the full event, take part in the social activities and present a poster at the poster session (if any). However, the EPFL community is welcome to attend specific lectures without registration if the topic is of interest to their research. Do not hesitate to contact the CECAM Event Manager if you have any question.
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\r\nDescription
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\r\nDNA is a dramatic example of a multiscale system, where Å-scale details impact the global properties of a meter-long fiber and where femtosecond processes can impact on the entire genome years later. This implies that any theoretical study on DNA should take into consideration the vast variety of space and time scales, making it necessary the adoption of multi-physics approaches, covering the entire range of theoretical methods from quantum chemistry to rough mesoscopic models. Within this scenario the importance of data to bias simulations and as a reference to calibrate low resolution methods (Dans et al. 2017; Neguembor et al. 2022; Schultz et al. 2025).
\r\nLarge efforts have been made to develop accurate low level DFT and semiempirical methods that can be data-providers for a new generation of force-field, as well as integrated in QM/MM packages for an efficient representation of DNA reactivity (Aranda et al. 2019). Atomistic force-field have gained accuracy, showing good ability to reproduce unusual forms of DNA and long segments of DNA in the context of chromatin (Collepardo-Guevara et al. 2015; Genna et al. 2025) and providing very useful data for the calibration of lower level coarse-grained or mesoscopic methods(De Pablo 2011; Farré-Gil et al. 2024) ,which have gained sequence specificity, scalability and computational efficiency, allowing to simulate kilo-to-megabase fragments of DNA. Very remarkable efforts have been made to move up these methods to represent chromatin, which requires the introduction of biases derived from experimental data (MNAseq, chromosome conformation capture, and even static or dynamic pictures obtained by ultra-resolution microscopy, and others (Buitrago et al. 2019; Neguembor et al. 2022; Li and Schlick 2024)). This has opened the possibility to recover dynamic “base-pair” resolution pictures of chromatin and study aspects from local and global chromatin rearrangements to inter-play between effector proteins and nucleosomes, the impact of lesions in chromatin structure, and even the role of phase separation in defining local chromatin arrangements (Joseph et al. 2021; Liu et al. 2025; Park et al. 2025).
\r\nAs the target systems move from the small atomistic detail to the entire chromatin fiber, the community is broken into different sub-communities. This generates a risk of disconnection, which would lead to a waste of effort reformulating solutions to already solved problems, or ignoring the characteristic that a method should have to maintain coherence with more accurate models, or to scale to represent systems of real biological interest. This will be the main objective of this meeting, which will join a variety of sub-communities with a common interest: the DNA.
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\r\nReferences
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\r\n[1] J. Aranda, M. Terrazas, H. Gómez, N. Villegas, M. Orozco, Nat. Catal., 2, 544-552 (2019)
\r\n[2] D. Buitrago, L. Codó, R. Illa, P. de Jorge, F. Battistini, O. Flores, G. Bayarri, R. Royo, M. Del Pino, S. Heath, A. Hospital, J. Gelpí, I. Heath, M. Orozco, Nucleic Acids Research, 47, 9511-9523 (2019)
\r\n[3] R. Collepardo-Guevara, G. Portella, M. Vendruscolo, D. Frenkel, T. Schlick, M. Orozco, J. Am. Chem. Soc., 137, 10205-10215 (2015)
\r\n[4] P. Dans, I. Ivani, A. Hospital, G. Portella, C. González, M. Orozco, Nucleic. Acids. Res., gkw1355 (2017)
\r\n[5] J. de Pablo, Annu. Rev. Phys. Chem., 62, 555-574 (2011)
\r\n[6] D. Farré-Gil, J. Arcon, C. Laughton, M. Orozco, Nucleic Acids Research, 52, 6791-6801 (2024)
\r\n[7] V. Genna, G. Portella, A. Sala, M. Terrazas, I. Serrano-Chacón, J. González, N. Villegas, L. Mateo, C. Castellazzi, M. Labrador, A. Aviño, A. Hospital, A. Gandioso, P. Aloy, I. Brun-Heath, C. Gonzalez, R. Eritja, M. Orozco, Nucleic Acids Research, 53, (2025)
\r\n[8] J. Joseph, A. Reinhardt, A. Aguirre, P. Chew, K. Russell, J. Espinosa, A. Garaizar, R. Collepardo-Guevara, Nat. Comput. Sci., 1, 732-743 (2021)
\r\n[9] Z. Li, T. Schlick, Nucleic Acids Research, 52, 583-599 (2023)
\r\n[10] S. Liu, C. Wang, B. Zhang, Biochemistry, 64, 1750-1761 (2025)
\r\n[11] M. Neguembor, J. Arcon, D. Buitrago, R. Lema, J. Walther, X. Garate, L. Martin, P. Romero, J. AlHaj Abed, M. Gut, J. Blanc, M. Lakadamyali, C. Wu, I. Brun Heath, M. Orozco, P. Dans, M. Cosma, Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol., 29, 1011-1023 (2022)
\r\n[12] S. Park, R. Merino-Urteaga, V. Karwacki-Neisius, G. Carrizo, A. Athreya, A. Marin-Gonzalez, N. Benning, J. Park, M. Mitchener, N. Bhanu, B. Garcia, B. Zhang, T. Muir, E. Pearce, T. Ha, Nature, (2025)
\r\n[13] E. Schultz, J. Kaplan, Y. Wu, S. Kyhl, R. Willett, J. de Pablo, WIREs. Comput. Mol. Sci., 15, (2025)
Step into the world of cutting-edge imaging and discover how modern light microscopy helps shape life sciences. This intensive, hands-on course will take you beyond the basics — exploring the principles, possibilities, and powerful applications of today's most advanced microscopy techniques. Whether you're tracking proteins in real time, decoding molecular interactions, or chasing nanometer-scale resolution, this course will give you the tools and confidence to turn microscopy into a cutting-edge tool.
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\r\nA rich mix of theory and live demonstrations on state-of-the-art instruments, covering:\r\n
This day is an opportunity for architecture students from the 2nd year Bachelor to the 2nd year Master to attend presentations of the studio and teaching unit programmes, to enable them to choose their options and finalise their enrolments.There will be no online replay and the event is not recorded. The presentation documents are available on the dedicated pages:
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\r\nDesign studios and teaching units ↗︎
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\r\nRegistration dates ↗︎