EPFL

EPFL engineers have developed a neural interface that disappears harmlessly in the body after several months and allows natural tissue to grow back. What’s more, it can be implanted in a patient’s blood vessel rather than inside the brain, thereby avoiding the need for invasive surgery.

EPFL scientists in a European collaboration propose a personalized protocol for optimizing stimulation of optic nerve fibers, for the blind, which takes into account feedback from the viewer’s brain. The protocol has been tested on artificial neural networks known to simulate the physiology of the entire visual system, from the eye to the visual cortex. The stimulation protocol will be tested in clinical trials with partners in Rome.

EPFL has just opened a new imaging center to serve as a hub for state-of-the-art technology in imaging systems. The only one of its kind in Switzerland, the center pools the imaging expertise that is currently housed at nearly a hundred laboratories in five EPFL schools. The goal is to facilitate cross-disciplinary research and anchor EPFL’s position at the cutting edge of imaging technology for research applications.

An EPFL Master’s student has shown that artificial intelligence can be used to further automate the process of land-use classification in Switzerland, especially for rare and complicated land categories that until now have been classified manually. A stretch of land in Valais Canton served as the sample for her research.

Engineers at EPFL and École Polytechnique in France analyzed the friction between pages in a book and the mechanical force needed to bend them. Drawing on their experiments, they developed a new theoretical model for predicting the elasto-frictional behavior of stacked layers.