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EPFL among ‘fastest rising young universities’

Switzerland’s EPFL has been named to a list of the seven “fastest rising young universities in the world” by UK-based Times Higher Education.

EPFL among 'fastest rising young universities'
Aerial view of EPFL's campus overlooking Lake Geneva. Photo: Alain Herzog

The Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne is grouped among universities less than 50 years old that have risen the most in the THE’s World University rankings, traditionally dominated by institutions founded between the 11th and 19th centuries.

Typically, the older a university is, the better it tends to do in rankings.

But EPFL, founded in 1969, is among those bucking the trend, THE said.

Switzerland’s second ranked university behind its older sister federal institute, ETH Zurich (founded in the mid-19th century), it ranked 34th in the World University Rankings for 2014-15.

That marked a rise from its 48th place in the 2010-2011 rankings.

The technology and science university, with 9,921 students, is among a group of rising stars that have shown what others developed over centuries “can be achieved in a matter of decades”.

It is ranked sixth out of the top seven behind Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (founded in 1991); Maastricht University in the Netherlands (1976); University of Warwick in the UK (1965); Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (1971); and Spain’s Pompeu Fabra University (1990).

Just behind EPFL is Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, founded in 1991.

The Swiss university like the others in the group has racked up high scores in three areas, THE says.

These include ‘citation impact’ — how much a university’s research papers are being referenced by other academics, a measure of the influence its research has on the rest of the world.


Another category is ‘income from industry’ – how much companies are working with academics and applying their research to the real-world.

A third area is ‘international outlook’; a measure of how many international students and staff a university attracts, and how much it is collaborating on international research papers with other institutions.

“The average age of the top 100 institutions in the latest Times Higher Education World University Rankings is close to 200 years old, and Oxford University can trace its origins back to 1096,” Phil Baty, editor of the THE rankings, said in a statement.

“But this research shows emphatically that to be world class you don’t have to be old – you just have to be bold.”

With strong leadership and solid financial backing the rising stars have shown that it is possible for visionary young universities to break through.

The list of fastest rising universities was released ahead of the THE’s Young Universities Summit set for April 29th-31st at Dublin City University.

EPFL President Patrick Aebischer is among the speakers announced for the summit when the THE will launch its first 100 Under 50 university rankings.  

See also: POMPEU FABRA NAMED 'YOUNG GUN' UNIVERSITY

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EPFL

EXPLAINED: How will the post-lockdown tracing system work in Switzerland?

Given there is no Covid-19 vaccine at the present time, contact tracing is believed to be an effective, though complex, strategy for breaking transmission chains and controlling the spread of disease. How will it work in Switzerland?

EXPLAINED: How will the post-lockdown tracing system work in Switzerland?
Research at EPFL will help establish a tracing system. Photo by Fabrice Coffrini / AFP

How does the tracking work?

The process involves identifying contaminated people, so that measures can be taken to prevent the spread of infection on to others.

It is all the more important in cases when the sick person has no symptoms and may not even know they are sick.

Once the infected person is identified, efforts are made to locate and test the people they have been in contact with within the past two weeks. If one of those contacts is found to be infected, the investigation starts again.

Trying to find chains of contamination could be a long process.

What are some of the challenges of contact tracing?

In Switzerland, as in many other countries, the challenge is to establish an effective tracking system, while respecting data protection.

Since mobile phones would be used, various technical and legal questions could arise, particularly on the collection and use of data.

In Switzerland, to process this information in the context of the pandemic, either the consent of the individual or an anonymisation of the data is required.

READ MORE: Swiss scientists launch a new app to collect Covid-19 data 

What tools will Switzerland be using for post-confinement contact tracing?

One possibility would be the tracking by GPS of mobile phones, as already implemented in a partnership between the federal government and Swisscom. This method allowed the authorities to monitor the public to see if they complied with the restrictions related to going out and traveling during the Easter holidays. 

But the government is now supporting a brand new project at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and its sister institution, Zurich’s Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule (ETHZ).

Both are working on the so-called D3-PT project, a free downloadable application for mobile phones, which will run on Google’s Android operating system and on Apple’s iOS.

Its goal, according to Edouard Bugnion, professor of computer science at EPFL, is to “break the chain of virus transmission” by identifying new cases and isolating them. If a person is found positive for coronavirus, all the people he has encountered in the previous days will be alerted, so that they can go into quarantine and be tested. 

No exact details or launch date have been released yet, but the Federal Council thinks the D3-PT tracing would work well in Switzerland.

Will this system guarantee privacy?

Until very recently, the two institutions participated in the European research project Pan-European Privacy-Preserving Proximity Tracing, bringing together 130 organisations from eight countries.

But EPFL and ETHZ distanced themselves from this project after realising that user data would not be protected, and went on launch the D3-PT system which, they said, would be more “decentralised and transparent”.
 

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