About

Damien Buchs is a Scientific Project Assistant at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). He holds a Master Degree in Information System from the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC) at the University of Lausanne and a Bachelor Degree in Business Administration from the School of Engineering and Management Vaud (HEIG-VD). Trained as an economist with management and business development orientation, he has specialized in the fields of Information Technology with a strong interest in Information Architecture, Business Models, and Design Thinking. Passionate about those areas, he designs and develops applications for public and private companies. In parallel, his Master thesis looks at a psychological factor for fostering innovation, learning behaviors, and team performance where innovation projects are complex, uncertain, and interdisciplinary.

Cédric Duchêne is an electrical engineer currently working as project engineer at the EPFL+ECAL Lab. He received his PhD in signal processing at Grenoble National Polytechnical Institute (INPG), France with a thesis focused on the signal processing occurring in human visual system. As postdoc at the EPFL he has conducted CTI-sponsored projects research on the analysis of atrial fibrillation ECG activity and gastro-intestinal motility. With the industrial partner Infrasurvey Sàrl in Switzerland, he has developed the UPhone©, an inductive radio system for voice transmission through rocks, earth, and snow up 50 meters, and the UGPS3©, a system enables to determine the positioning of an object or a person, 300 meters below the surface. His research interests are biomedical signal processing and micro-engineering. He has build-up the Electronic Maker Lab. He is in charge of teaching topics such, Practical Electronics, Internet of Things as well as wearable technologies at the ECAL.

Marc is a scientific collaborator in the College of Humanities at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne and lecturer at the University of Lausanne, where he teaches BA and MA course in the field of Asian studies with an orientation on technology and innovation. Trained as an economist, then in Chinese studies, his research looks at innovation in emerging markets both from a macro perspective (e.g., implications on the global innovation landscape) and a micro perspective (business model innovation in emerging markets). In addition his research looks at specific aspects of China’s innovation landscape (e.g., shanzhai, makerspaces, etc.). He also explores applied pedagogy and, in particular, experiential learning (e.g., summer camp for HEC students in an emerging market). Marc obtained his PhD on China’s telecommunication reforms from the London School of Economics. He holds a Master Degree in International Management (HEC, 1997) and an undergraduate degree in Business Management from the University of Lausanne (1993) with a Minor in Information Systems. He studied Chinese Language and Economics for two years at Fudan University, Shanghai (1993-1995) and one semester at the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, Canada (1996).