Thesis Director: Prof. D. Constam,
\r\nMolecular Life Sciences doctoral program
\r\nThesis Nr. 11220
\r\n
\r\nTo take part in the public defense, please contact directly the speaker
“To emphasize (...) dubious uses of risk is perverse, a dirty way of talking about a
\r\nclean scientific subject”
\r\nMary Douglas, Risk and Blame, 36.
\r\n
\r\nAs the baseline condition of so many territories shaped by extractive industries, administrative delay, and climatic instability, risk is prevalent. Yet ecological risk—pollution, fires, floods, heatwaves, droughts—is still presented as problems to be solved rather than conditions to be inhabited. This also speaks to an outsourcing of risk through externalized consequences of spatial injustice. Banks, developers, material supply chains, normative institutions, subcontracting hierarchies —all contend with calculated risk. This edition of Pressure Points asks us to unpack what it means to live with the risk, how it is managed, commodified, quantified, invented, politicized, instrumentalized, tamed, and to think, design, cohabitate intellectually and physically with it. The assembled guests should help us think and build literacy toward developing tools for living within uncertain territories and futures.
\r\n
\r\nSonia Seneviratne
\r\nMonday, October 26, 17:00 CET
\r\n
\r\nSonia Seneviratne is a Full Professor in Land-Climate Dynamics at ETH Zurich, with a focus on climate science and environmental physics. She conducts research on climate extremes such as droughts, land-climate processes, and human-induced climate change, based on climate modelling and data analyses. Listed among the Highly Cited Researchers of Web of Science (Clarivate) since 2014, she was a Coordinating Lead Author and Lead Author on several reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), including the Special Report on Extreme Events, the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C, and the Sixth Assessment Report in 2021. Seneviratne has received the Macelwane Medal of the American Geophysical Union in 2013 and the Hans-Oeschger Medal of the European Geosciences Union. Since July 2023, she serves as IPCC Working Group I Vice-Chair for the seventh assessment cycle (2023–2030). Her most recent contribution, published in June 2026, is the release of MESMER v1.0.0, an open-source climate model emulator she helped develop as part of her research group. It reproduces the spatial climate patterns of complex Earth System Models, including temperature and several climate-extreme indicators, making detailed climate information accessible to the wider research community.
\r\n
\r\nRIOT (Research and Innovation on Territory) is a laboratory engaged in pedagogy and research within the Institute of Architecture (ENAC) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology–EPFL, led by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes with Elif Erez, Flore Guichot, Jeremy Ratib, Summer Islam, Antoine Iweins, Kathy Kao, Nathalie Marj, Romain Dubetier-Grenier, Sylvie Clavel, and Saira Mohammed. Believing that the construction sector and design disciplines must pivot and wholeheartedly engage in the current social and climatic urgencies by rewiring themselves to face and repair the harm, RIOT utilizes tactics and strategies to decarbonize, decolonize, and depatriarchalize space production–by design.
\r\n
\r\n
“To emphasize (...) dubious uses of risk is perverse, a dirty way of talking about a
\r\nclean scientific subject”
\r\nMary Douglas, Risk and Blame, 36.
\r\n
\r\nAs the baseline condition of so many territories shaped by extractive industries, administrative delay, and climatic instability, risk is prevalent. Yet ecological risk—pollution, fires, floods, heatwaves, droughts—is still presented as problems to be solved rather than conditions to be inhabited. This also speaks to an outsourcing of risk through externalized consequences of spatial injustice. Banks, developers, material supply chains, normative institutions, subcontracting hierarchies —all contend with calculated risk. This edition of Pressure Points asks us to unpack what it means to live with the risk, how it is managed, commodified, quantified, invented, politicized, instrumentalized, tamed, and to think, design, cohabitate intellectually and physically with it. The assembled guests should help us think and build literacy toward developing tools for living within uncertain territories and futures.
\r\n
\r\nLiam Ross
\r\nTuesday, November 3, 17:00 CET
\r\n
\r\nLiam Ross is an architect and senior lecturer in Architectural Design at the University of Edinburgh, with a focus on building standardisation as a mode of architectural design, and in particular on fire-safety regulation. He also examines how those standards produce surprising side-effects as they are reinterpreted in practice. His book Pyrotechnic Cities: Architecture, Fire-Safety and Standardisation was published by Routledge in 2022, and describes the way that architectural design is an instrument of political agency.
\r\nHis work has been exhibited and published widely, including in Architectural Research Quarterly (arq), Arch+, and journalistic outlets such as Blueprint, Prospect, and Volume.
\r\nRoss has experience of practice in the UK and US, including a period of 5 years with Malcolm Fraser Architects, and maintains a relationship with professional practice as co-founder of ESALA Projects, a consultancy offering pro-bono and for-fee design services to public and third-sector clients. His most recent work, published in January 2026 in Architectural Research Quarterly, includes a co-authored article with Jon Goodbun entitled ‘Design and the extended building site: Ecologies of production and the production of ecologies’, which reframes the building site as an 'extended' socioecological system reaching across the global supply chains, material extraction, and labour that construction depends on, arguing that building is an ecological and political process rather than a purely material one.
\r\n
\r\nRIOT (Research and Innovation on Territory) is a laboratory engaged in pedagogy and research within the Institute of Architecture (ENAC) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology–EPFL, led by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes with Elif Erez, Flore Guichot, Jeremy Ratib, Summer Islam, Antoine Iweins, Kathy Kao, Nathalie Marj, Romain Dubetier-Grenier, Sylvie Clavel, and Saira Mohammed. Believing that the construction sector and design disciplines must pivot and wholeheartedly engage in the current social and climatic urgencies by rewiring themselves to face and repair the harm, RIOT utilizes tactics and strategies to decarbonize, decolonize, and depatriarchalize space production–by design.
\r\n
“To emphasize (...) dubious uses of risk is perverse, a dirty way of talking about a
\r\nclean scientific subject”
\r\nMary Douglas, Risk and Blame, 36.
\r\n
\r\nAs the baseline condition of so many territories shaped by extractive industries, administrative delay, and climatic instability, risk is prevalent. Yet ecological risk—pollution, fires, floods, heatwaves, droughts—is still presented as problems to be solved rather than conditions to be inhabited. This also speaks to an outsourcing of risk through externalized consequences of spatial injustice. Banks, developers, material supply chains, normative institutions, subcontracting hierarchies —all contend with calculated risk. This edition of Pressure Points asks us to unpack what it means to live with the risk, how it is managed, commodified, quantified, invented, politicized, instrumentalized, tamed, and to think, design, cohabitate intellectually and physically with it. The assembled guests should help us think and build literacy toward developing tools for living within uncertain territories and futures.
\r\n
\r\nJess Myers
\r\nMonday, November 16, 17:00 CET
\r\n
\r\nJess Myers is an urbanist whose practice includes work as an editor, writer, podcaster and curator, and is a tenure-track Assistant Professor at Syracuse University. Previously, Myers was an assistant professor of architecture at the Rhode Island School of Design. She has worked as an archivist, translator and analyst in New York and Paris. Myers served as a co-steward of the Architecture Lobby’s New York chapter and as the series editor for SEIU’s book series, Taking Freedom. Her research takes many forms, including a variety of multimedia platforms, which she uses to explore politics and residency in urban conditions. Myers’ podcast, Here There Be Dragons focuses on the intersection of identity politics and security policy in public space through the eyes of New Yorkers, Parisians and Stockholmers. Myers’ work has been published in The Architect’s Newspaper, Log, The Funambulist Magazine, Failed Architecture, Avery Review, Dwell and l’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui. Her most recent exhibition, “A Pause Is Not A Break,“ was exhibited widely, including at the Rhode Island School of Design, the University of Iowa and Carleton University.
\r\n
\r\nRIOT (Research and Innovation on Territory) is a laboratory engaged in pedagogy and research within the Institute of Architecture (ENAC) at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology–EPFL, led by Charlotte Malterre-Barthes with Elif Erez, Flore Guichot, Jeremy Ratib, Summer Islam, Antoine Iweins, Kathy Kao, Nathalie Marj, Romain Dubetier-Grenier, Sylvie Clavel, and Saira Mohammed. Believing that the construction sector and design disciplines must pivot and wholeheartedly engage in the current social and climatic urgencies by rewiring themselves to face and repair the harm, RIOT utilizes tactics and strategies to decarbonize, decolonize, and depatriarchalize space production–by design.
\r\n
Prendre sa retraite après un long parcours professionnel ne va pas forcément de soi, si l'on pense à la place prise par le travail dans son parcours de vie. Le séminaire a pour objectif d'aider les participant.e.s à identifier les changement que cette transition introduira dans leur existence, afin d'anticiper et construire un nouvel équilibre de vie. Il s'agit également de conscientiser tous les aspects de cette période de la vie et les adaptations à réaliser, seul.e ou en couple, ainsi qui de définir les axes principaux et futures activités et projets. Les questions liées aux aspects financiers et au maintien de son capital santé, sont aussi abordées.
","image_description":"","creation_date":"2025-11-11T16:07:20","last_modification_date":"2025-11-17T12:53:37","link_label":"Inscription","link_url":"https://epfl.eu.crossknowledge.com/site/m/public_training/705","canceled":"False","cancel_reason":"","place_and_room":"","url_place_and_room":"","url_online_room":"","spoken_languages":["https://memento.epfl.ch/api/v1/spoken_languages/1/?format=json"],"speaker":"AvantAge","organizer":"KeepLearning","contact":"keeplearning@epfl.ch","is_internal":"True","theme":"","vulgarization":{"id":1,"fr_label":"Tout public","en_label":"General public"},"registration":{"id":1,"fr_label":"Sur inscription","en_label":"Registration required"},"keywords":"","file":null,"icalendar_url":"https://memento.epfl.ch/event/export/118551/","category":{"id":15,"code":"FORM","fr_label":"Formations internes","en_label":"Internal trainings","activated":true},"academic_calendar_category":null,"domains":[],"mementos":["https://memento.epfl.ch/api/v1/mementos/6/?format=json","https://memento.epfl.ch/api/v1/mementos/145/?format=json","https://memento.epfl.ch/api/v1/mementos/431/?format=json"]},{"id":71039,"title":"Practical Course by BIOP : Fiji for Everyday Tasks","slug":"practical-course-by-biop-fiji-for-everyday-task-15","event_url":"https://memento.epfl.ch/event/practical-course-by-biop-fiji-for-everyday-task-15","visual_url":"https://memento.epfl.ch/image/32430/200x112.jpg","visual_large_url":"https://memento.epfl.ch/image/32430/720x405.jpg","visual_maxsize_url":"https://memento.epfl.ch/image/32430/max-size.jpg","lang":"en","start_date":"2026-10-06","end_date":"2026-10-06","start_time":"13:00:00","end_time":"17:00:00","description":"During this afternoon, you will work on hands-on exercises in Fiji for everyday tasks such as building your own macros, opening large datasets and image display tricks. More advanced topics, such as how to perform curve fitting, plotting line profiles, reslicing your data and batch processing, are also included.
\r\n
\r\nPlease feel free to suggest extra topics when you register. Depending on the replies, this will tailor the end of the day with some practicals ( for example : Colocalization, Tracking with Trackmate or cell detection with StarDist or Cellpose in Fiji ... )
\r\nWhile the course is of general use, the examples and applications are primarily relevant for those using light microscopy techniques.\r\n
Thesis Director: Prof. C. Hébert,
\r\nPhysics doctoral program
\r\nThesis Nr. 12109
\r\n
\r\nTo take part in the public defense, please contact directly the speaker
Photonics Day is a yearly event that aims to promote research discussions and networking among members of the EPFL photonics community, as well as researchers and industry players in the photonics sector. The program includes invited talks from world leaders in the field, a thesis presentation by the winner of the Best EDPO distinction, a scientific picture contest organised by EPC, as well as presentations by students in the Doctoral Program in Photonics, who will compete in the 180-Second Thesis Competition.
\r\n
\r\nThis year the Photonics Day will take place on Thursday October 22, 2026 at the EPFL Forum Rolex.
\r\n
\r\nParticipation is free and includes lunch. Registration opens in September and is mandatory by October 12, 2026. You’ll find both the registration form and the full program on the same page.
The Doctoral School is glad to invite all first-year PhD candidates to join the annual PhD Welcome Event!
\r\n
\r\nWhat to expect:
\r\n- Meet the EPFL doctoral community, the administrators of the doctoral school and programs, the PhD associations
\r\n- Discover the many EPFL services dedicated to supporting and counseling students and researchers
\r\n- Get useful insights about your doctoral journey at EPFL, and the resources available to help you
\r\n- Enjoy free food & drinks, and connect with PhD candidates from all our programs and campuses!
\r\n
\r\nWho is it for?
\r\n- The event is open to EPFL PhD candidates who enrolled after November 2025. Registration is required.
\r\n
\r\nPhD candidates working outside Lausanne are especially encouraged to join. This event is a golden opportunity to discover the Lausanne campus and meet your peers! You may request travel support: please contact us via the registration form.
\r\n
\r\nDirect link to the registration form
\r\n
\r\nWe look forward to meeting you on November 5th!
\r\n
\r\nThe Doctoral School Administration Team (EDOC)
\r\n