What kind of research and profile stories are featured on EPFL's website?

Updated

EPFL's website features two main kinds of human-centred research content: profile articles about professors, PhD candidates, and master's students, and news stories that report research findings and partnerships. The profiles tend to focus on the person behind the work — their motivations, career stage, and perspective — while the news items explain what was discovered or built. A separate magazine, Dimensions, covers broader thematic issues such as water.

Profile stories: people at different career stages

The "Profiles" section is where EPFL publishes interview-style and narrative pieces about individuals in its community. From the page evidence, three examples show the range:

Profile subject Career stage Topic
Paloma Navarro Professor How the immune system changes the aging brain, and whether those changes could be targeted to extend "healthspan, not necessarily lifespan"
Anabelle Ayma and Quitterie Legrand Master's students A semester project that grew into a published article in an international scientific journal
Shardul Chiplunkar Fourth-year PhD candidate, School of Computer and Communication Sciences Representing fellow PhD students, managing stress, and engaging with big questions (part of the "Mind to Mind" series)

The pattern is deliberate: EPFL uses profiles to show research life at three distinct stages — faculty, doctoral, and master's — rather than only promoting senior scientists. The PhD profile is framed around student representation and well-being, not just output, which suggests the section also serves prospective and current students.

Research news: findings, tools, and partnerships

The "Latest news" area carries shorter reports on research and institutional developments. Two examples from the page evidence illustrate the typical shape of these items:

  • AI and cybersecurity. Prof. Mathias Payer, head of EPFL's HexHive research group, explains how AI is changing the way vulnerabilities are found in everyday devices, and argues that "a few simple steps can effectively prevent cyber attacks." This is a researcher explaining a mechanism and its practical implications, not a paper announcement.
  • Apertus and Proton. The Apertus team — researchers at EPFL, ETH Zurich, and the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre (CSCS) — partnered with Swiss technology company Proton to make Apertus 1.5 available in Lumo, Proton's AI assistant. The stated purpose is to let researchers "gain direct feedback from real-world use for the first time," which is a deployment-and-feedback story rather than a discovery story.

A third item, "AI takes root in university curriculum," reports on more than 12,000 students returning to class and asks how AI has transformed higher education — a teaching-focused piece rather than a research one.

The Dimensions magazine: thematic, cross-scale coverage

Dimensions is EPFL's magazine and takes a different approach from the news feed. The edition described on the page is built around water, exploring "key issues related to water, from the nanoscopic scale to the" — that is, it spans from very small-scale science up to planetary questions, tied to the framing of Earth as the Blue Planet. If you want long-form, theme-driven science writing rather than individual researcher stories, this is the section to look at.

How to use these sections

  • If you want to understand a research area through a person: start with Profiles, which gives you the researcher's own framing of the problem.
  • If you want current findings or institutional partnerships: the Latest news feed is the place; items are dated (for example, 17.09.26 and 14.09.26 in the evidence shown).
  • If you want a single topic treated in depth across disciplines: check the current Dimensions theme.

One practical note: the page evidence shows dated news items and profile pieces, so the specific stories above may be replaced over time. The structural categories — Profiles, Latest news, and Dimensions — are the stable entry points to look for.