by Marie Jones
Tuesday, June 17th marked the one-year anniversary of SPAN’s very first event — and what better way to celebrate our birthday than by concluding our VPT-sponsored Policy Brief Writing Series!
We were thrilled to welcome our case study providers to campus, along with the many supporters from EPFL and external organisations who stood by us throughout our inaugural year. The event opened with an inspiring address by our institutional advisor, Nina Eggert, who emphasised the urgent need to strengthen the connection between science and policy — a message that resonates deeply in these challenging times.
We are especially grateful to Nina for believing in our vision back when SPAN was still just an idea. Standing before a full room of engaged experts and students, we were proud to show how that idea has grown into a thriving community and impactful initiative.
Student presentations
The main reason for bringing together this beau monde was to present the evidence-based policy recommendations developed for six local case studies — the result of months of dedicated work by our 26 participants since March. Before each team took the stage, workshop leaders Prof. Jörg Balsiger and Alice Guilbert from the University of Geneva introduced the innovative teaching method that guided the process. Their expert mentorship was instrumental in making this entire series a success.
- Developing a National Vaccination Strategy for HPV-Related Cancers in Switzerland
Case study provider: Swiss Learning Health System at University of Lucerne
Team: Frank Charlton, Salomé Guilbert, Beatrice Lugli, Callum Gray - Action Against Food Waste
Case study provider: CastorFree Gan
Team: Disha Bandyopadhyay, Michale Fest, Tao Zhang - AI in Education
Case study provider: Idiap
Team: Jeanne Bourgeois, Sophie Johnson, Inés Altemir Marinas
Link to brief: coming soon! - Valorisation of Lithium-Ion Batteries from Electric Bikes in Lausanne
Case study provider: Ville de Lausanne
Team: Hanbit Lee, Sebastian Leser, Christophe Miahcud-Lavoie, Nicola Simon Ramseyer, Jorge Colio Zardoya - Choice of energy performance indicators for buildings in Lausanne
Case study provider: Services Industriels de Lausanne (SIL)
Team: Marie Jones, David Bekri, Esha Sharma, Silvia Camenzind - Energy Communities for Greenhouses
Case study provider: Voltiris
Team: Chiara Ongaro, Pierre Demey, Ziad Sahlab
Read or download the policy briefs here.
Looking back to our first year
What began with just the three of us — Kyle, Sophie, and myself — has grown into a strong team of over a dozen active members, all of whom played a crucial role in organising this semester’s events. We are deeply grateful for their dedication and energy — SPAN’s success is their success!
As engineers, we like numbers — so here’s a snapshot of SPAN’s first year, by the figures. We held four workshops: two on negotiation skills with Dr. Jack Williams, and two on policy brief writing, offering learning opportunities for all experience levels at EPFL, from Bachelor students to senior scientists. To inspire the next generation of informed leaders, we welcomed five professors, two recent graduates, one former politician, and one former UN director.
Joining the Semaine de la Durabilité also marked our expansion to UNIL — that’s +1 university! In total, we organised 12 individual events, reached over 200 members via our mailing list, and directly impacted around 80 participants.
Final thank you
None of this would have been possible without the unwavering support of our Academic Advisor, Prof. Michaël Aklin. From our very first meeting, he generously offered not only his guidance and network, but also a seed grant that helped launch SPAN from the ground up. His thoughtful words during the event were just a glimpse of the encouragement he has given us throughout the past year — support for which we are deeply grateful and can never thank him enough.
We also took the opportunity to thank our other sponsors, especially the Vice Presidency for Responsible Transformation, whose generous support funded both the workshop series and this final event. We hope they appreciated our investment in focaccia as much as we did! 😉
Bright future ahead
While it’s bittersweet for us to say goodbye as we near the final stretch of our PhDs, we are confident that SPAN will continue to flourish in the capable hands of its new executive committee: Ziad Sahlab, Hanbit Lee and Christophe Michaud-Lavoie. We wish them all the best in carrying the torch forward — the SPAN spirit lives on!
