École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
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Circa Diem 2.0 exhibited at Solar Biennale, mudac (Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts), Lausanne
No full textMain artist of Circa Diem 2.0 installation (Ø 535 cm x (h) 340 cm) Main artist of Circa Diem 2.0 installation (Ø 535 cm x (h) 340 cm) was exhibited at Solar Biennale, mudac (museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts), Lausanne, Switzerland (21 March to 21 September 2025). Collaboration with Prof. Mark Pauly (EPFL) & Prof. Javier Fernandez Contreras (HEAD-Genève).
Currently exhibited at MIT Museum, Cambridge, USA (28 October 2025 to 15 August 2026).
Our daily exposure to light is a key factor in a healthy and sustainable life in urban environments. Light received at the eye regulates our neurophysiology and profoundly affects the liveability of cities, which we tend to inhabit increasingly indoors and deeper underground. This multi-sensorial immersion seeks to bring awareness about the threat of our disconnection from natural light and reflect on the relationships between urban lifestyles and light hygiene through a day in the life – or, rather, a day in the light.
L’exposition quotidienne à la lumière est un facteur clé d’une vie saine et durable dans un environnement urbain. Captée par l’œil, la lumière régule notre neurophysiologie et affecte profondément le caractère vivable des villes, où nous passons de plus en plus de temps en intérieur. Cette immersion multisensorielle fait prendre conscience de la menace que représente notre déconnexion à la lumière naturelle, et fait réfléchir sur les relations entre modes de vie urbains et hygiène lumineuse sur une journée de vie – ou plutôt une journée de lumière.LIPI
Potential of Reversible Solid Oxide Cells and Long-term Energy Storage in Residential Areas
No full textSCI-STI-F
A novel hydrogen-based desalination system for a self-sustaining community
No full textThis work proposes a novel hydrogen-based desalination system to replace fossil fuelbased plants. The system has a water-hydrogen nexus framework to achieve an efficient operation, providing electricity, potable water, and green hydrogen. Through optimal planning, less operation cost is found by considering the variation in supply and demand. Results show that the system has an average efficiency of 43.3%, higher than other renewable desalination systems. Meanwhile, the lower water production cost of 0.15$/t makes it competitive compared to membrane-based systems. The system well presents the merits of the water-hydrogen nexus.SCI-STI-F
Probing the latent hierarchical structure of data via diffusion models
No full textHigh-dimensional data must be highly structured to be learnable. Although the compositional and hierarchical nature of data is often put forward to explain learnability, quantitative measurements establishing these properties are scarce. Likewise, accessing the latent variables underlying such a data structure remains a challenge. In this work, we show that forward-backward experiments in diffusion-based models, where data is noised and then denoised to generate new samples, are a promising tool to probe the latent structure of data. We predict in simple hierarchical models that, in this process, changes in data occur by correlated chunks, with a length scale that diverges at a noise level where a phase transition is known to take place. Remarkably, we confirm this prediction in both text and image datasets using state-of-the-art diffusion models. Our results show how latent variable changes manifest in the data and establish how to measure these effects in real data using diffusion models.PCSLLION
The 2D-drone swarm, a safe open-source sample transfer system for laboratory full automation
No full textLaboratory automation is an active field in biology, drug discovery, and more recently in synthetic chemistry and materials science. Local automation has existed in the field for quite some time, but long-range or total laboratory automation is much less developed. In this article, we present a complete, open and decentralized, global automation system called the 2D drone swarm system. It is based on a simple approach of small mobile robots moving autonomously in a dedicated track suspended above the scientific equipment for the long-distance sample and closely connected to localized robotic arms dedicated to short-distance transfers, interaction with scientific equipment and direct sample processing. This approach is inspired by the Kiva/Amazon model, where isolated autonomous mobile robots automatically deliver goods to external operators. It is also inspired by the modern automotive industry, such as Tesla's Gigafactories, to provide an evolutionary and flexible system that can adapt to numerous types of tasks with a minimum of resources and easily adapt to different types of workstations. This global automation system is controlled directly from the Laboratory Scheduler by a Robot Subscheduler, coded in an open-source environment, which takes care of all mobile and local robot operations. The result is an operator and scientific equipment safe, cost and energy-efficient, easily extensible and open-source global laboratory automation system that can be adapted to many different applications and laboratories.SWISSCATSUNMILCREATE-LA
Patents and the Formation of Technological Knowledge: Owning and Describing Inventions in England and France (1780s-1850s)
No full textThis article examines how the English and French patent regimes contributed to the formation of technological knowledge in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From the 1730s in England and the 1790s in France, patent requests were required to include a textual and often visual specification of the invention claimed by the applicant. We study the evolution of the specification genre, the chain of actors involved in the production of such documents, and the circulation of these texts and drawings in the public sphere of technology. To do so, we draw on a case study of six pairs of patents in the lace and tulle industry. By focusing on patents taken out in both countries for the same invention, we analyze how local cultures of invention and legal regimes shaped how technology was described. Tracing the history of Technology understood as the science of industrial arts requires, we argue, a deep dive into the archives of practice.LHS
Combinatorial Use of Reference Electrodes and DRT for Disentangling AEM Electrolyzer Losses
No full textSCI-STI-JVHISIC-XRDSAPPL-PIX
Detection of the Geminga pulsar at energies down to 20 GeV with the LST-1 of CTAO
No full textContext. Geminga is the third gamma-ray pulsar firmly detected by imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes (IACTs) after the Crab and the Vela pulsars. Most of its emission is expected at tens of giga-electronvolts, and, out of the planned telescopes of the upcoming Cherenkov Telescope Array Observatory (CTAO), the Large-Sized Telescopes (LSTs) are the only ones with optimised sensitivity at these energies. Aims. We aim to characterise the gamma-ray pulse shape and spectrum of Geminga as observed by the first LST (hereafter LST-1) of the Northern Array of CTAO. Furthermore, this study confirms the great performance and the improved energy threshold of the telescope, as low as 10 GeV for pulsar analysis, with respect to current-generation Cherenkov telescopes. Methods. We analysed 60 hours of good-quality data taken by the LST-1 between December 2022 and March 2024 at zenith angles below 50◦. Additionally, a new Fermi-LAT analysis of 16.6 years of data was carried out to extend the spectral analysis down to 100 MeV. Lastly, a detailed study of the systematic effects was performed. Results. We report the detection of Geminga in the energy range between 20 and 65 GeV. Of the two peaks of the phaseogram, the second one, P2, is detected with a significance of 12.2σ, while the first (P1) reaches a significance level of 2.6σ. The best-fit model for the spectrum of P2 was found to be a power law with a spectral index of Γ = (4.5±0.4stat)−+0062syssys, compatible with the previous results obtained by the MAGIC Collaboration. No evidence of curvature is found in the LST-1 energy range. The joint fit with Fermi-LAT data confirms a preference for a sub-exponential cut-off over a pure exponential, even though both models fail to reproduce the data above several tens of giga-electronvolts. The overall results presented in this paper prove that the LST-1 is an excellent telescope for the observation of pulsars, and improved sensitivity is expected to be achieved with the full CTAO Northern Array.LASTR
The intrinsically disordered regions of organellophagy receptors are interchangeable and control organelle fragmentation, ER-phagy and mitophagy flux
No full textOrganellophagy receptors control the generation and delivery of portions of their homing organelle to acidic degradative compartments to recycle nutrients, remove toxic or aged macromolecules and remodel the organelle upon physiologic or pathologic cues. How they operate is not understood. Here we show that organellophagy receptors are composed of a membrane-tethering module that controls organellar and suborganellar distribution and by a cytoplasmic intrinsically disordered region (IDR) with net cumulative negative charge that controls organelle fragmentation and displays an LC3-interacting region (LIR). The LIR is required for lysosomal delivery but is dispensable for organelle fragmentation. Endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-phagy receptors’ IDRs trigger DRP1-assisted mitochondrial fragmentation and mitophagy when transplanted at the outer mitochondrial membrane. Mitophagy receptors’ IDRs trigger ER fragmentation and ER-phagy when transplanted at the ER membrane. This offers an interesting example of function conservation on sequence divergency. Our results imply the possibility to control the integrity and activity of intracellular organelles by surface expression of organelle-targeted chimeras composed of an organelle-targeting module and an IDR module with net cumulative negative charge that, if it contains a LIR, eventually tags the organelle portions for lysosomal clearance.GHI-G