EPFL – École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne based in Lausanne, Switzerland, is one of the world’s most dynamic and cosmopolitan engineering universities. It encompasses five schools, two colleges, 17 research institutes and 524 labs and research groups, bringing together students, faculty and staff from over 120 different countries. Every day, over 17,000 people come to our main campus in Lausanne, on the shores of Lake Geneva, to work, study or conduct research.
Our faculty is made up of some 370 professors who teach and perform research. The percentage of women reached more than 31% in 2022, with the result that the number of women in our faculty members went from 20% in 2021 to over 23% in 2022.
Our researchers often apply for international grants, including from the EU, to finance their work. As of end-2022 they had received 174 ERC grants from the European Commission.
Fifteen of our researchers are among the 1% most cited in their fields worldwide, and our faculty members publish an average of 13 articles a year. We also stand out in the area of technology transfer. Nearly 100 priority patents are filed under the EPFL name every year, and one EPFL spin-off is created every two weeks on the basis of technologies developed at our university.
EPFL collaborates with an important network of partners, including other universities and colleges, secondary schools and gymnasiums, industry and the economy, political circles, and the general public, with the aim of having a real impact on society. It is a member of the EuroTech Universities Alliance – a strategic partnership of leading European universities of science and technology joining forces to build a strong, sustainable, sovereign, and resilient Europe. The EuroTech Brussels Office hosts EPFL’s EU Liaison Officer in Brussels.
The EU Liaison Officer’s role is to establish closer connection between EPFL and the EU ecosystem in Brussels, initiate new projects and collaborations with European universities, and help them to get in touch with EPFL researchers relevant for their collaborative research and/or educational projects.