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Join us for the third edition of the Lemanic Life Sciences Hackathon!
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\r\nOrganized by EPFL School of Life Sciences, EPFL AI Center and the University of Bern, we aim to bring together clinicians, life scientists, and data scientists to test ideas, drive innovation, and tackle real-world challenges in healthcare and research.
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\r\nExplore the untapped potential of AI in life sciences and clinical research\r\n
The EPFL Latsis Symposium 2026: “Decoding the Cell: Modeling, Predicting, and Engineering Cellular States” will be held on October 29-30, 2026, at the Olympic Museum in Lausanne.
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\r\nThis international gathering will bring together leading scientists in single-cell analysis, computational modeling, and cellular engineering to explore how recent breakthroughs in multi-omics technologies, predictive algorithms, and synthetic biology are reshaping our understanding of cellular function.
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\r\nThrough interdisciplinary talks and discussions, the symposium will spotlight advances in single-cell multi-modal data integration, predictive modeling of cell identity and behavior, and the engineering of synthetic cell states. By connecting researchers across experimental and computational domains, the event aims to establish new conceptual and technological frameworks for modeling and controlling cellular systems.
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\r\nHosted by EPFL, the symposium will foster scientific exchange, spark new collaborations, and accelerate progress toward next-generation cell-based therapies, disease models, and synthetic biological innovations.
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\r\nJoin us in Lausanne to connect with the global community shaping the future of cell understanding and engineering.
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\r\nSPEAKERS:
\r\n• Gray Camp – Research Group Leader at the Roche Institute for Translational Bioengineering (ITB) in Basel
\r\n• Barbara Engelhardt – Senior Investigator, Gladstone Institutes & Professor, Department of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University
\r\n• Jeremy Gunawardena – Professor, Department of Medicine and Life Sciences (MELIS), Pompeu Fabra University, Barcelona
\r\n• Muzlifah Haniffa – Head of the Cellular Genomics Programme and Deputy Director of the Wellcome Sanger Institute and Professor of Clinical Dermatology at the University of Cambridge
\r\n• Anshul Kundaje – Associate Professor of Genetics and Computer Science at Stanford University
\r\n• Prisca Liberali – Professor at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering, ETHZ & Senior Group Leader at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research
\r\n• Ewa Paluch – Professor of Anatomy in the Department of Physiology, Development and Neuroscience and Fellow of Trinity College at the University of Cambridge
\r\n• Steve Quake – Professor of Bioengineering and Applied Physics, Stanford University
\r\n• Sussane Rafelski – Sr. Director, Quantitative Biology at the Allen Institute for Cell Science
\r\n• Kevin Tsia – Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering and the Program Director of the Biomedical Engineering Program at the University of Hong Kong
\r\n• Bo Wang – Chief AI Scientist, Vector Institute & Assistant Professor, University of Toronto
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\r\nGenerously supported by\r\n
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\r\nThe 2027 edition of the CROSS program calls upon researchers at EPFL and the University of Lausanne to submit proposals for joint projects that bring the natural sciences and engineering together with the social sciences and humanities.
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\r\nThrough this annual call for projects, CROSS provides competitive grants to support new seed research endeavors that have the potential to grow into full–scale interdisciplinary research projects.
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\r\nThe 2024 CROSS call is open to all topics.
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\r\nPROPOSALS:
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\r\nProposals must come from joint UNIL-EPFL teams, which bring together specialists in the human and social sciences on the one hand, with specialists from life sciences, natural sciences or engineering on the other. Up to six projects will be selected, with a maximum of CHF 60,000 awarded per project.\r\n
14:15–15:00 (Swiss Time)
\r\nDr. Xavier Hernandez-Alias (Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry; in person)
\r\nMulti-scale analysis of mRNA translation adaptation to nutrient shifts reveals novel regulatory elements
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\r\n15:00–15:45 (Swiss Time)
\r\nProf. Silvi Rouskin (Harvard Medical School; online)
\r\nSequence is all you need – Large Language Models Decode the Structural Grammar of IRESes
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\r\nFree coffee & cakes for in-person participants from 14:00 at the AI Lounge
\r\nAI Center, ELE 117, EPFL
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\r\nRegister (in person): https://forms.office.com/e/KbdLYQ52fj
\r\nJoin online: https://epfl.zoom.us/j/61493685341
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The notion of semi-abelian category, introduced by G. Janelidze, L. Márki and W. Tholen in 2002, generalizes that of abelian category, and captures the homological properties that the categories of groups, associative algebras, Lie algebras and cocommutative Hopf algebras over a field have in common. Internal structures behave surprisingly well in semi-abelian categories. For example, any internal reflexive graph admits at most one internal category structure, and the categories of internal categories and internal groupoids are isomorphic. Moreover, the category of internal groupoids is equivalent to the category of internal crossed modules. The notion of internal crossed module in any semi-abelian category was introduced by G. Janelidze in 2003, and recovers in particular the classical notion of crossed module of groups. The fact that the category of internal groupoids in a semi-abelian category is itself semi-abelian implies that also the category of internal n-fold groupoids is well-behaved.
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\r\nIn this talk, I will prove that the full subcategory of internal n-groupoids in a semi-abelian category is a Birkhoff subcategory of the category of internal n-fold groupoids, and provide a simple description of the corresponding reflection for n=2. In the abelian context, the internal n-groupoids yield a torsion-free subcategory of the category of internal n-fold groupoids, and it is possible to characterize (higher) central extensions and compute generalized Hopf formulae for homology.
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\r\nPart of this talk is based on joint work with Marino Gran
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