Honorary Lecture - Prof. François Golay
Event details
| Date | 28.02.2023 |
| Hour | 18:00 › 19:45 |
| Speaker | Prof. François Golay |
| Location | Online |
| Category | Inaugural lectures - Honorary Lecture |
| Event Language | French, English |
Date: 28 February 2023
Time: 18:00 – 19:45
Introductions by the Dean, lectures by Prof. François Golay and Prof. Bertrand Merminod. Followed by an Apero.
Place: Rolex Learning Center
Zoom link
Title:
“Desperately seeking the Digital Twins”
Abstract
With the increasing availability of data sets of all kinds and sources, Digital Twins are emerging as powerful tools in many domains of science and engineering. The metaphor is particularly attractive for our urban and natural environments, where Digital Twins convey evermore perfect images and models of tangible real-world objects: buildings, trees, rivers, … But is this a sustainable endeavor? Will we eventually end up with a Digital Twin of the Babel Tower? This lecture addresses these questions through a retrospective of some 30 years dedicated to Geographic Information Systems and the modeling of our geographical space at LASIG, and summarizes a few related challenges for research and teaching.
About the speaker
With a high school education in both humanities and sciences, François Golay obtained an MS (diploma) degree in rural and geomatics engineering from EPFL in 1982. He then oriented his activities towards the emerging field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a research and teaching assistant and scientist at EPFL. After an internship at the Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal, he obtained a PhD (Dr sc. tech.) in 1992 with a focus on GIS modeling and design under the supervision of Prof. Pierre Howald and Dr. Jean-Jacques Chevallier. After a few years with the start-up company SIT-Conseil as head of GIS analysis and design activities, he spent one year at the University of Washington in Seattle before returning to EPFL as an associate professor for GIS. He developed the GIS research lab (LASIG) as a large competence platform supporting research and teaching activities in the field of geographic information sciences. Appointed as a full professor, he was the first director of the newly created Institute for local and regional planning and design (INTER) at the ENAC School in 2002, and he was the head of EPFL’s program in Environmental Sciences and Engineering (SIE) from 2013 to 2021. Over this time, he has advised some 20 PhD theses and numerous MSc theses, predominantly addressing empirical research aimed at fostering the value of geographic information and sciences for decision support and assessing its organizational and societal impacts. He has been Swiss delegate for several COST actions in the field of Urban Engineering, as well as for the European Spatial Data Research Organization (EuroSDR).
Time: 18:00 – 19:45
Introductions by the Dean, lectures by Prof. François Golay and Prof. Bertrand Merminod. Followed by an Apero.
Place: Rolex Learning Center
Zoom link
Title:
“Desperately seeking the Digital Twins”
Abstract
With the increasing availability of data sets of all kinds and sources, Digital Twins are emerging as powerful tools in many domains of science and engineering. The metaphor is particularly attractive for our urban and natural environments, where Digital Twins convey evermore perfect images and models of tangible real-world objects: buildings, trees, rivers, … But is this a sustainable endeavor? Will we eventually end up with a Digital Twin of the Babel Tower? This lecture addresses these questions through a retrospective of some 30 years dedicated to Geographic Information Systems and the modeling of our geographical space at LASIG, and summarizes a few related challenges for research and teaching.
About the speaker
With a high school education in both humanities and sciences, François Golay obtained an MS (diploma) degree in rural and geomatics engineering from EPFL in 1982. He then oriented his activities towards the emerging field of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) as a research and teaching assistant and scientist at EPFL. After an internship at the Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal, he obtained a PhD (Dr sc. tech.) in 1992 with a focus on GIS modeling and design under the supervision of Prof. Pierre Howald and Dr. Jean-Jacques Chevallier. After a few years with the start-up company SIT-Conseil as head of GIS analysis and design activities, he spent one year at the University of Washington in Seattle before returning to EPFL as an associate professor for GIS. He developed the GIS research lab (LASIG) as a large competence platform supporting research and teaching activities in the field of geographic information sciences. Appointed as a full professor, he was the first director of the newly created Institute for local and regional planning and design (INTER) at the ENAC School in 2002, and he was the head of EPFL’s program in Environmental Sciences and Engineering (SIE) from 2013 to 2021. Over this time, he has advised some 20 PhD theses and numerous MSc theses, predominantly addressing empirical research aimed at fostering the value of geographic information and sciences for decision support and assessing its organizational and societal impacts. He has been Swiss delegate for several COST actions in the field of Urban Engineering, as well as for the European Spatial Data Research Organization (EuroSDR).
Links
Practical information
- Informed public
- Registration required
Organizer
- SSIE - Christina Treier
Contact
- SSIE - Christina Treier