4TU.Alumni Switzerland Tour - Lausanne, Geneva and Zürich

Join us for a speed dating lunch with young alumni researchers from 12:00pm to 14:00pm.

Programme:

Location: Restaurant L'Épicure, EPFL Campus (Bâtiment BI).

Find more information about the attending alumni researchers below.

For the event in Lausanne, the participating alumni researchers are the following.

Jamie Duburg, Postdoc researcher - Inorganic Synthesis and Catalysis, EPFL (UT)

Jamie Duburg obtained his BSc and MSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Twente before starting his PhD at the Paul Scherrer Institute and ETH Zürich in the field of polymeric membranes for vanadium redox flow batteries working alongside Dr. Lorenz Gubler and Prof. Thomas J. Schmidt.

Upon completing his PhD in 2024, he started as a postdoctoral researcher in the group of Prof. Xile Hu at EPFL where he explores the development of polymeric membranes for various electrochemical applications.

Guo-Shiuan Lin, PhD student - Urban and Environmental Systems, EPFL (TU Delft)

Guo-Shiuan is a doctoral student at the Laboratory of Urban and Environmental Systems at EPFL in Switzerland. He holds an MSc in Applied Earth Sciences from TU Delft, which he completed in 2022, and a BSc in Chemical Engineering from NTHU, Taiwan, obtained in 2019. His research passion is on designing sustainable and climate-resilient cities, using modeling and big data to address urban and environmental challenges.

Outside of his academic pursuits, he enjoys traveling and hiking in different countries.

Laurie Magnin, PhD student - Cultivation Techniques and Varieties in Arable Farming, Agroscope (WUR)

With a deep passion for food, insects, and agriculture, Laurie Magnin pursued a master’s degree in Agroecology at Wageningen University after earning her undergraduate degrees in Biochemistry and in Agronomy in France. This experience allowed Laurie to engage with a vibrant international community, explore plant-insect interactions, and gain valuable insights into sustainable food production.

Coming from the French Alps, she felt a natural pull back to the mountains, which led Laurie to conduct her master’s thesis and work with a spin-off startup of ETH in Zürich. Following a period as an independent macro photographer and educational content creator focused on sustainable agriculture, she embarked on a new academic journey with Agroscope and AgroParisTech. Laurie is now nearing the completion of her PhD thesis, which examines the potential of integrating oilseed rape varieties and mixed cropping systems to mitigate insect pest challenges.

Pau Wiersma, PhD student - mountain hydrology, University of Lausanne (TU Delft)

During Pau Wiersma's BSc in Civil Engineering at the TU Delft, he quickly developed an interest in environmental science, and hydrology in particular. This led Pau to also pursue an MSc in Environmental Engineering and, eventually, his current PhD position at the University of Lausanne, where he works on reconstructing historical snow amounts in mountainous regions using river discharge data. Along the way, Pau spent a semester on exchange in Beijing, another semester studying Chinese in Hangzhou, and 4 months on internship in Hanoi.

After his PhD, Pau hopes to further apply his expertise for the benefit of the environment in any water-related field, ideally in Switzerland. He enjoys learning languages and to improve chances of staying in Switzerland is currently working hard to make German his 8th language.

During this event you get the opportunity to have a speed dating dinner with young alumni researchers & a ‘borrel’.

Programme:

Location: Alumni Pavillon (GEP), ETH Zurich. The Alumni Pavillon is on ETH Zurich’s main campus (ETH Zentrum), right next to the ETH Zentrum Polybahn (funicular) station and just below the main building.

Find more information about the attending alumni researchers below.

For the event in Zürich, the participating alumni researchers are the following.

Maaike de Boer, PhD Student - Forest Ecology, ETH (WUR)

Maaike de Boer was born and raised in the flat landscapes of the Netherlands, and her journey took a transformative turn when, at the age of 13, she moved to Norway. Fast forward to 2021, Maaike graduated with a bachelor's degree in Biology from the University of Agder, Kristiansand. In the majestic landscapes of Norway, she discovered her passion for nature, forests and sustainability, and returned to the Netherlands to pursue a master’s degree in Forest and Nature Conservation at Wageningen University.

Along the way, Maaike's academic path led her through Italy, Switzerland, and the Czech Republic, where she gained expertise in phenology, dendrochronology, and sustainable forest management. These experiences ultimately brought her to ETH Zürich, where she is currently in the first year of pursuing a PhD, focused on tree-species-specific resilience to climate change, particularly in response to extreme drought and heatwaves, using dendrochronology and isotope analysis.

Jaïr Campfens, PhD student - Laboratory on Human-Environment Relations in Urban Systems, EPFL (TU/e)

Jair Campfens is a PhD candidate at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), where his research focuses on advancing decentralized renewable energy systems in Switzerland as part of the EDGE project. This initiative aims to fast-track the growth of locally-sourced renewable energy in Swiss cities, midlands, and the Alps.

He holds two MSc degrees: one in Sustainable Energy Technology from Eindhoven University of Technology and another in Public Policy & Human Development from a one-year double degree program jointly offered by Maastricht University's Graduate School of Governance and the United Nations University's UNU-MERIT institute. This interdisciplinary education spiked an interest to navigate complex governance challenges and policy issues in sustainable development and in the energy transition.

Beyond his academic credentials, Jair is an innovative professional with experience in leading student teams and working as business developer in the field of clean-tech.

Inês Dias, Postdoc researcher - University Hospital Zurich (UT)

Inês Dias recently graduated from her doctoral degree in Neuroscience at ETH Zurich, and currently holds a postdoctoral position at the University Hospital Zurich (USZ), Switzerland. Her research focuses on exploring auditory deep sleep enhancement as a preventive tool to modulate neural circuitry properties in neurodegeneration, particularly Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Inês obtained a BSc in Biomedical Engineering at NOVA University Lisbon (Portugal), and an MSc in Biomedical Engineering at University of Twente (The Netherlands), where she specialized in Physiological Signals and Systems. After a short stay at the Centre for Neuroplasticity and Pain (CNAP) in Aalborg (Denmark), she joined the Clinical Neurophysiology group (CNPH) at University of Twente, in 2019. At CNPH, she focused on how intrinsic network bursts (mimicking a slow-wave sleep-like state) and external input (electrical or cholinergic stimulation) influence memory consolidation in dissociated neuronal cultures. In 2020, she joined the Sleep and Neurodegeneration Animal Laboratory at USZ and the Department of Health Sciences and Technology (D-HEST) at ETH Zurich to conduct her doctoral and postdoctoral research.

Sarah Hanus, PhD student - Hydrology and Water Resources, UZH (TU Delft)

Sarah Hanus is finishing her PhD in Hydrology and Water Resources at the University of Zurich, where she is researching the global relevance of water originating from the mountains for water availability and water use in the lowlands. Her research combines global hydrological and glaciological modelling. She is passionate about the interconnectedness of human and natural systems and the consequences of socio-economic and climate change on water resources.

Sarah holds an MSc in Civil Engineering – Water Management from TU Delft (2020), where she was honored as the Best Graduate of the Faculty of Civil Engineering and Geosciences. Prior, she earned a BSc in Environmental Science from the University of Tübingen, Germany. Originally from Northern Germany near Kiel, she loves to explore different countries and cultures and has lived in Costa Rica and Tanzania. Outside of work, Sarah enjoys hiking in the mountains and learning new languages.

Dan Macken, PhD student - Sustainable Food Processing, ETH (WUR)

Dan Macken studied Biotechnology at WUR 2020-2023, focusing on microalgal bioprocess engineering and genetic engineering, developing a genetic switch based CRISPR Cas12a tool for his thesis. During the MSc he founded AlgO Circular, producing sustainable food ingredients using microalgae grown on acidic distillery byproducts. AlgO won the ReThink Protein challenge 2021, was a 4TU wildcard at SLUSH 2021 and won the Dutch Cleantech challenge 2023. Failure to get funding and patent our process, AlgO was discontinued and

Dan moved to Zurich to begin his PhD on Sustainable Food Processing at ETH at the end of 2023.

Ying-Chuan Ni, PhD student - Traffic Engineering Group, ETH (TU Delft)

Ying-Chuan is a doctoral student in the Traffic Engineering Group at ETH Zurich. Before coming to Zurich, he studied for his MSc degree at TU Delft. He is passionate about analyzing traffic condition for cities to solve traffic congestion problems. He is a member in the E-Bike City project, which aims to reallocate more road space to cyclists for the city of Zurich. Apart from these, he enjoys hiking and traveling a lot in the free time.

Hadi Sotudeh, PhD student - Football Analytics, ETH (TU/e)

Hadi Sotudeh, an EngD and MSc graduate in Data Science from TU Eindhoven, is a fourth-year doctoral student at ETH Zürich, focusing on detecting football team’s tactical formation and player positions from tracking data. He is also a teaching assistant for the university’s "Soccer Analytics" course and has previously worked as a data science consultant for the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB).

Hadi’s notable achievements include third place in Paris Saint-Germain's 2019 and second in Manchester City's 2023 data challenges. To learn more about Hadi, visit his LinkedIn profile.

Ozgur Türkoglu, Postdoc researcher - Earth Observation of Agroecosystems, Agroscope (UT)

Ozgur Türkoglu is a post-doctoral researcher at Agroscope Earth Observation of Agroecosystems Team working in the intersection of AI and Earth Observation. He did his Ph.D. at ETH Zurich in the EcoVision Lab, Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Group. Ozgur's research interests are (i) sequence modeling of (image) time series, (ii) uncertainty quantification and efficient (i.e. implicit) deep ensemble networks, (iii) fine-grained image classification (iv) visual camera localization, (v) generative algorithms for visual synthesis, and (vi) remote sensing data.

Ozgur obtained BSc degrees in both physics & electrical engineering from Bogazici University. He completed a master's in electrical engineering with a specialization in computer vision at the University of Twente. During the master's thesis, he worked on sequential image generation using generative adversarial networks at the University of Amsterdam Deep Vision Lab. He did a few internships during his studies: (i) visual camera localization at Niantic AR Lab in London, (ii) 3D object recognition for mobile robots at TNO Intelligent Imaging Lab in The Hague (iii) robotic software engineer at Robotnik in Valencia. Before the Ph.D., he worked as a 3D computer graphics R&D engineer at Colormass in Berlin. Between his Ph.D. and Post-Doc, he also co-founded AI fashion startup IDA AI which developed the ModaMind platform in less than a year.

Willem Verheijen, PhD student -  Functional Inorganics, ETH (TU/e)

Born and raised in Eindhoven, Willem Verheijen began his academic journey in 2018 at the Eindhoven University of Technology, where he pursued a dual bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering & Chemistry and Applied Physics. Over four years, he graduated cum laude in both disciplines, contributing to projects on nanowire solar cells, perovskite solar cells, and single-chain-polymeric nanoparticles. His passion for sustainability led him to join the student team SOLID, where he collaborated with an interdisciplinary group of students to engineer an innovative hydrogen storage system.

After completing his studies in Eindhoven, Willem moved to Switzerland to pursue a Master's degree in Interdisciplinary Sciences at ETH Zürich, continuing to explore his deep interest in both chemistry and physics. During his Master's, he worked on projects investigating interactions between perovskite quantum dots and conducted research on singlet-fission solar cells at MIT, culminating in a successful graduation.

Willem is now a PhD researcher in the Functional Inorganics group at ETH Zürich, where he focuses on advancing the understanding and development of perovskite quantum dots for single-photon sources.

These events are free for alumni of the Dutch Technical Universities (4TU) but for logistical reasons, prior registration is required. Please register via the registration form by clicking the button below.