Profile picture
Administrative data

Michaël Unser

michael.unser@epfl.ch http://bigwww.epfl.ch/unser/index.html

EPFL STI IMT LIB
BM 4136 (Bâtiment BM)
Station 17
1015 Lausanne

EPFL AVP-CP IMAGING
ELE 130 (Bâtiment ELE)
Station 11
CH-1015 Lausanne

Expertise

Image Processing, Medical Imaging, Biological Imaging, Wavelets, Splines, Multiresolution
Michael Unser  is Full Professor with EPFL’s school of Engineering and the academic director of EPFL's Center for Imaging, Lausanne, Switzerland. His primary areas of investigation are signal processing, biomedical imaging and applied functional analysis. He is internationally recognized for his research contributions to sampling theory, wavelets, the use of splines for image processing, stochastic processes, and computational bioimaging. He has published over 400 journal papers on those topics. He is the author with P. Tafti of the book “An introduction to sparse stochastic processes”, Cambridge University Press 2014.  
 
From 1985 to 1997, he was with the Biomedical Engineering and Instrumentation Program, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda USA, conducting research on bioimaging. Dr. Unser has served on the editorial board of most of the primary journals in his field including the IEEE Transactions on Medical Imaging (associate Editor-in-Chief 2003-2005), IEEE Trans. Image Processing, Proc. of IEEE, and SIAM J. of Imaging Sciences. He co-organized the first IEEE International Symposium on Biomedical Imaging (ISBI2002) and was the founding chair of the technical committee of the IEEE-SP Society on Bio Imaging and Signal Processing (BISP).

Prof. Unser is a fellow of the IEEE (1999), an EURASIP fellow (2009), and a member of the Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences. He is the recipient of several international prizes including five IEEE-SPS Best Paper Awards, two Technical Achievement Awards from the IEEE (2008 SPS and EMBS 2010), the 2018 Technical Achievement Award from EURASIP, the 2020 Career Achievement Award from the IEEE Society on Engineering in Medicine and Biology (EMBS), and the 2025 IEEE SPS Norbert Wiener Society Award. He was awarded three ERC AdG grants: FUNSP (2011-2016), GlobalBioIm (2016-2021), and FunLearn (2021-2026).

Research unit

Laboratoire d'imagerie biomédicale

Awards

Norbert Wiener Society Award

IEEE Signal Processing Society

2025

Education Award

EPFL's Section of Micro-Engineering (SMT)

2022

Academic Career Achievement Award

IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society,

2020

2019 Best Paper Award

IEEE Signal Processing Society

2019

Technical Achievement Award

European Association for Signal and Image Processing

2018

2017 Best Paper Award

IEEE Signal Processing Society

2017

Technical Achievement Award

IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society

2011

Claude Shannon-Harry Nyquist Technical Achievement Award

IEEE Signal Processing Society

2008

Teaching & PhD

PhD Students

Youssef Haouchat, Vincent Patrick Lawrence Guillemet, Bassam El Rawas, Stanislas Ducotterd, Mehrsa Pourya, Zhiyuan Hu

Past EPFL PhD Students

Stefan Horbelt, Jan Kybic, Maria Arrate Munoz Barrutia, Manuela Feilner, Slavica Jonic, Mathews Jacob, Michael Liebling, Michael Sühling, Muthuvel Arigovindan, François Aguet, Cédric Vonesch, Ildar Khalidov, Sathish Ramani, Florian Luisier, Kunal Narayan Chaudhury, Pouya Dehghani Tafti, Matthieu Guerquin-Kern, Jean-Charles Baritaux, Aurélien Bourquard, Ricard Delgado Gonzalo, Ulugbek Kamilov, Masih Nilchian, Emrah Bostan, Zsuzsanna Püspöki, Daniel Andreas Schmitter, Virginie Uhlmann, Julien René Fageot, Pedram Pad, Anaïs Badoual, Laurène Donati, Harshit Gupta, Thanh-An Michel Pham, Shayan Aziznejad, Thomas Jean Debarre, Pakshal Narendra Bohra, Alexis Goujon, Yan Liu

Courses

Fundamentals of Image Analysis

EE-805

This summer school is an hands-on introduction on the fundamentals of image analysis for scientists. A series of lectures provide students with the key concepts in the field, and are followed by practical sessions with popular software on the participants' own image-analysis software.

Image processing I

MICRO-511

Introduction to the basic techniques of image processing. Introduction to the development of image-processing software and to prototyping using Jupyter notebooks. Application to real-world examples in industrial vision and biomedical imaging.

Image processing II

MICRO-512

Study of advanced image processing; mathematical imaging. Development of image-processing software and prototyping in Jupyter Notebooks; application to real-world examples in industrial vision and biomedical imaging.

Signals and systems I (for MT)

MICRO-310(a)

Introduction of the basic concepts and mathematical tools for the characterization of signals and for the analysis and design of linear systems (filters or transmission channels). Application of these techniques to signal processing and communications.

Signals and systems I (for SV)

MICRO-310(b)

Introduction of the basic concepts and mathematical tools for the analysis and characterization of signals, the design of processing algorithms, and the linear modeling of systems for students in the life sciences. Application of these techniques to signal processing and communications.