Outman is a PhD student in Neuroprosthetics at the EPFL. He’s developing a new generation of neural implants to connect humans with machines, tackling some of the most compelling challenges in modern healthcare. He is currently part of the EPFLinnovators programme, dedicated to students that intend to translate their ideas into products, for the benefit of the wider public. In his free time, he is involved in scicomm activities to inspire the future generations of scientists and innovators.
Dmitry is a PhD candidate at UNIL, where he investigates molecular mechanisms of immune response against parasitic infections. Passionate about science communication, after winning Famelab Switzerland and being in the international final, Dmitry won several other science communication and public speaking competitions. He is a presenter, moderator and panelist at public outreach and knowledge-sharing events. He also organizes science festivals, workshops and social activities for his department.
Katarina has recently obtained a PhD in Bioinformatics from the University of Lausanne, where she was exploring the genetic nature of rare hereditary diseases of the eye and eye cancer. She is currently working at CHUV, using bioinformatics to promote personalized medicine.
Katarina co-organized the first Django Girls workshop in Lausanne to promote and teach programming to young women and gave popularization talks on Computational Biology to high-school students at the University of Lausanne.
Ossama is a pharmacist by training and a neuroscientist at heart. He received his PhD in Neuroscience from the EPFL after trying to understand how our brains process traumatic memories, and whether we can get rid of them. While in EPFL, Ossama presided the EPFL/UNIL public speaking toastmasters club. He holds a great passion for science communication/writing that led him to participate and win in various international science communication competitions.
Oskari is Co-Founder of UniteLabs, a life science laboratory automation start-up that builds solutions that can be re-purposed to perform new tasks. Despite his young age, Oskari combines his science background of engineering, physics, molecular biology, synthetic biology and computer science with leadership and business experience resulting from co-founding three start-ups. Since 2015 Oskari has also had a passion for teaching and competing in science communication, resulting in several awards.
Jennifer is a researcher in the Department of Quantum Matter Physics at the University of Geneva where she works on understanding and harnessing exotic properties of solids. Alongside her research, Jennifer teaches undergraduates in the department and works on promoting the representation of women in physics. Even with all this she still has time to dabble in stand up science and science-focussed media, a passion ignited by FameLab.
Donal is a postdoctoral researcher on the LHCb experiment at CERN. He studies the properties of particles containing beauty quarks, and in particular how matter and antimatter versions of these particles behave differently. Since FameLab, Donal has remained active in public engagement, and was the recipient of an Oxford Physics excellence award in 2019 for his ongoing outreach activities. He is also a musician, and records regularly with his wife as a member of the duo Accord de Voix.
Bechara is the CEO and Chief Scientist of a deep tech digital therapeutics company that develops software to prevent, measure and treat mental illness. Prior to this, Bechara was a Principal Investigator at the Zurich Psychiatric Hospital where his lab focused on the neural circuits and transmitters systems that underlie curiosity and its relationship to learning and mental illness. He continues to make time for science communication, for example by hosting workshops at Academia Film Olomouc.