EPFL Research refers to the research activities and affiliated laboratories of EPFL (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne), a public research university in Lausanne, Switzerland. Founded in 1969, the university primarily teaches and conducts research in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. As part of the Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology Domain, EPFL operates alongside its sister institution ETH Zurich under the Swiss Federal Department of Economic Affairs, Education and Research.
The research enterprise at EPFL spans numerous disciplines, from life sciences to artificial intelligence, and is supported by an urban campus that extends alongside Lake Geneva. The campus includes the EPFL Innovation Park, university research centers, and affiliated laboratories. Students, faculty, and researchers affiliated with EPFL include a Nobel Prize laureate, two Fields Medalists, two Pritzker Architecture Prize winners, and one Turing Award winner.
History and Evolution
The roots of modern-day EPFL trace back to the foundation of a private school called École spéciale de Lausanne in 1853, initiated by Louis Rivier, a graduate of the École Centrale Paris, and John Gay, then professor and rector of the Académie de Lausanne. At its inception, the school had only 11 students and offices located at Rue du Valentin in Lausanne. In 1869, it became the technical department of the Académie de Lausanne, and when the Académie was reorganized as a university in 1890, the technical faculty changed its name to École d'ingénieurs de l'Université de Lausanne.
In 1946, the institution was renamed École polytechnique de l'Université de Lausanne (EPUL), with 360 students enrolled. In 1969, the EPUL was separated from the University of Lausanne and became a federal institute under its current name, EPFL, directly controlled by the Swiss Federal Council. At that time, the university had grown to 1,400 students and 55 faculty members. Following the nomination of Patrick Aebischer as president in 2000, EPFL began developing into the field of life sciences, absorbing the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC) in 2008.
Research Focus and Centers
EPFL Research covers a broad spectrum of STEM fields, with significant contributions in areas such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and neural networks. The university's laboratories and research centers collaborate with international institutions and industry partners, including Google DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic. Research in deep learning and transformer architectures has positioned EPFL as a notable contributor to the development of large language models and generative AI.
The EPFL Innovation Park, an integral part of the campus, fosters entrepreneurship and technology transfer. Since 1997, an average of 12 start-ups have been created per year by EPFL students and faculty. In 2013 alone, EPFL start-ups raised a total of 105 million Swiss francs. The university also maintains research partnerships with major technology companies such as Intel, AMD, Samsung Electronics, and TSMC, as well as cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Azure, and Google Cloud.
Academic Programs and Admission
EPFL offers Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees, with the usual time to graduation being six semesters (3 years) for the Bachelor's degree and four additional semesters (2 years) for the Master's degree, with the final semester dedicated to writing a thesis. Only 58% of students who manage to graduate do so within this time period. The university maintains several long-standing student exchange programs, including the junior year engineering and science program with Carnegie Mellon University in the United States, as well as a graduate Aeronautics and Aerospace program with the ISAE in France.
Holders of a Swiss "maturité gymnasiale" are directly accepted into the first year of their Bachelor's program of choice, making EPFL non-selective in its undergraduate admission procedure for Swiss residents. International students are required to have a final grade average of 80% or above of the maximum grade of their upper secondary school national system. Since most undergraduate courses are taught in French, foreign students must provide documentation of having acquired a level B2 proficiency in French as measured on the CEFR scale, though C1 proficiency is recommended.
The real selection process happens during the first year of undergraduate studies, called the propaedeutic cycle. Students must pass a block examination of all courses taken during the first year at the end of the cycle. If the weighted average is insufficient, a student is required to retake the entire first year. Roughly 60% of students fail the first year across all majors, with higher failure rates in Life Sciences Engineering, Physics, Mathematics, and Electrical Engineering, where only 30-40% of students pass.
Campus and International Outlook
The École d'ingénieurs de l'Université de Lausanne, from which EPFL originates, was located in the center of Lausanne. In 1974, five years after EPFL became a federal institute, construction of a new campus at Dorigny in Écublens began. The inauguration of the first EPFL buildings of the new campus took place in 1978. The first stage of development, with a total budget of 462 million Swiss francs, was completed in 1984.
The environment at modern-day EPFL is highly international, with more than 125 countries represented on campus. As of 2025, EPFL enrolled 14,072 students from over 130 countries. The university has two official languages, French and English. Times Higher Education ranked EPFL as the most international university in the world two years in a row, in 2014 and 2015.
Rankings and Recognition
In 2023, the QS World University Rankings placed EPFL 16th worldwide across all fields and among the 10 best universities in several engineering disciplines. Times Higher Education ranked EPFL as the world's 19th best school for Engineering and Technology. The CWTS Leiden Ranking, which aims to provide highly accurate measurements of scientific impact, ranked EPFL world 13th and 1st in Europe in 2013 for all sciences.
Since EPFL in its current form was formed in 1969, it is included in the Times 100 Under 50 Rankings, which ranks the top 100 universities in the world under 50 years old. EPFL was ranked 1st in the world for three years in a row in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and 2nd in the world in 2018 and 2019. EPFL typically scores high on faculty-to-student ratio, international outlook, and scientific impact.