Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne

CHAPTER 2 From Technical School to World-Class Polytechnic: Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Gérard Escher

In 2008, the European Commission published the results of the first European- wide research grant competition for single principal investigators under the new funding scheme of the European Research Council (ERC). The historic academic European powerhouses, Oxford, Cambridge and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (ETHZ) were beaten in number of grants awarded by the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, a newcomer, ranking first for starting grants (8) and advanced grants (11)! Seven years and as many calls later, EPFL still ranks in the top five for the number of ERC grants obtained by its faculty, outperforming competitors easily twice its size. A hundred and fifty years ago local entrepreneurs in Lausanne, excited by the reputation of the new Grandes Ecoles in France, created a local, private “special school” financed entirely by student fees to teach math and engineering. State support would trickle in slowly and the ecole spéciale was eventually integrated into the Université de Lausanne. It progressively took shape as a technical faculty, distinct from the science faculty, and in 1946 the school was named Ecole Polytechnique Universitaire de Lausanne (EPUL). The school taught civil, mechanical, electrical, and chemical engineering as well as architecture. It was housed in distinct quarters within the city of Lausanne in 1953 and could accommodate a thousand students (EPUL, 1954). EPUL would have remained a local affair but for a major shift in the late sixties. In 1969, the Technical Faculty of the University of Lausanne was transformed into a new and separate university—the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne—no longer dependent on local (state) government funding, but instead on the national (federal) government. Today, EPFL is a bilingual university, teaching in French at the bachelor’s level and in English at the master’s level, with over ten thousand students (including more than two thousand PhD students), 380 faculty, over three thousand staff and a budget of just under one billion CHF (1 CHF is approximately equal to 1 US$). This budget is nearly forty times that of EPUL at the time of transformation.

The tenures of the first four EPFL presidents define the scope of this analysis, and may be separated into distinct phases. These include: creation and initial steps (Maurice Cosandey, 1969–1978); expansion and consolidation (Bernard Vittoz, 1978–1992; Jean-Claude Badoux, 1992–2000); and acceleration and international recognition (Patrick Aebischer, 2000–2016). Martin Vetterli, the fifth president, began his tenure on January 1st 2017.

1 Creation and Initial Steps (1969–1978)

1.1 Political and Economic Background The mindset of the early sixties was one of boundless faith in scientific, technical and social progress with growing markets, rapid modernization, new products and better jobs. The Cold War had instilled in Europe a fear of being squeezed between the two giants, the US and USSR, and generated a will for growth through quality and innovation. The creation of the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire or European Council for Nuclear Research (CERN) in 1954 is one example. Europe had been lagging behind in R&D investment. As one OECD observer remarked, while the US educated 20 engineers per thousand inhabitants, Europe barely graduated seven. In addition, Western Europe was very conscious of a “brain drain” towards the USA—43,000 engineers left Europe between 1949 to 1961. The Swiss, aware of their lack of natural resources, recognized the need to compensate with “brain resources” and high-quality services and products. Switzerland needed to educate at least 900 engineers per year, but barely produced 600, of which a sizeable portion (approximately 200) would migrate to the US. At the time, Switzerland had just one polytechnic university, ETH Zurich (ETHZ) and no neighboring countries to recruit engineers from. The early sixties also saw an embryonic national policy for R&D, notably the creation of a Swiss National Science Foundation. National science policy is notoriously difficult in a federal country where cantons have independent oversight of their universities. The single exception, ETH in Zurich, was founded in 1856 and owned by the federal government (“the confederation”). However, engineering was evolving towards high-skilled innovation and educating engineers was going to be oriented more and more towards experimentation and research with soaring costs for infrastructure. In the absence of powerful private industrial labs such as Bell Labs in the US, the task of modernizing engineering would have to come from national government. It was clear that local cantons would not be able to sustain the costs of up-to-date engineering schools.