A Conversation with Presidents Martin Vetterli (EPFL) and Joël Mesot (ETH Zurich) and Alumni of both Schools in San Francisco
We invite you to an exceptional event with Prof. Martin Vetterli, President of EPFL, and Prof. Joël Mesot, President of ETH Zurich. Join us for an exchange between the presidents of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology and distinguished local alumni.
The panel will be lively discussions and interactions with the audience on topics such as education in Switzerland, collaborations between the two schools, why people who studied at both institutions come to the US.
The discussion will be followed by food, drinks and plenty of opportunity to mingle and network!
Programme
5:00pm – Doors open
5:30pm – Opening Remarks
5:35pm – Panel discussion with:
- Joël Mesot, President of ETH Zurich
- Martin Vetterli, President of EPFL
- Mariko Burgin (ETH Zurich alumna), Mars Sample Return (MSR) Program Break The Chain (BTC) Domain Lead, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
- Igor Perisic (EPFL alumnus), VP Engineering and General Manager, Google
Moderated by Viktoria Ivarsson, International Relations Officer, ETH Zurich and EPFL alumna.
6:15pm – Q&A with the audience
6:45pm – Food, drinks, networking
8:00pm – Event ends
The event is a collaboration between EPFL, ETH Zurich and Swissnex in San Francisco.
Meet our Speakers:
Mariko Burgin is an engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, in Pasadena, California, USA, and the 2023-2024 IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS) President. She received an M.S. degree in electrical engineering and information technology from ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and an M.S. and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan - Ann Arbor, USA. Her background is in applied electromagnetics and active/passive microwave remote sensing (radars, radiometers). She currently focuses on project systems engineering and mission formulation for Earth and Mars missions, and is the Mars Sample Return Break-The-Chain Domain Lead. Dr. Burgin is passionate about mentoring and founded the IEEE GRSS Women Mentoring Women program.
Joël Mesot studied physics at ETH Zurich, obtaining a doctorate in solid-state physics in 1992. He was awarded the ETH Zurich Latsis Prize in 2002 and the Swiss Physical Society (SPG) IBM Prize in 1995. After research residencies in France and the USA, he came to ETH Zurich and joined the PSI, where he became Head of the Laboratory for Neutron Scattering in 2004. He was director of the PSI from 2008 to 2018, and he has been a full professor of physics at ETH Zurich since 2008. Professor Mesot is part of various national and international advisory bodies, including the Foundation Board of the “Switzerland Innovation” Park, the Marcel Benoist Foundation, the Global Network Advisory Board of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Governing Board CREATE (Singapore). He is the President of ETH Zurich since 2019.
Igor Perisic received a diploma in mathematics from EPFL in 1991, followed by a PhD in statistics from Harvard University. He started his career in industry in Silicon Valley first with the software start-up Entopia before going back to academia for a one-year postdoc at Stanford University. After a second start-up experience as the CTO of healthline.com – a health information website – Igor Perisic joined Microsoft as a product manager in their research unit. In October 2007, he joined the then-4-year old company LinkedIn as the engineering director in charge of the search engine, algorithmic recommendations for website customization and data infrastructure. He held the position of Chief Data Officer and VP of Engineering at LinkedIn. He is since 2021 VP Engineering and General Manager at Google.
Martin Vetterli received his degree in Electrical Engineering from ETH Zurich, before then completing a Master of Science at Stanford University and finally obtaining his doctorate at EPFL. Following professorships at Columbia University and at the University of California, Berkeley, he returned to EPFL as full professor of Communication Systems in 1995. From 2000 to 2003, he was a member of the Swiss Science Council (SSC). From 2004 to 2011, he was Vice President of EPFL and from 2011 to 2012, Dean of the Faculty of Computer and Communication Sciences. From 2013 to 2016, he was President of the National Research Council of the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF). He is the President of EPFL since 2017.
