Andrea Dunbar is Professor of Practice at EPFL’s College of Management of Technology and Head of Executive Education. Her teaching focuses on digital transformation, machine learning, emerging technologies and the management of technology and innovation.

She is also Chief Technology Officer (CTO) of CSEM, the Swiss technology innovation center, where she is responsible for shaping the organization’s technology vision and applied research roadmap and for strengthening the connection between emerging research, industrial needs and societal challenges.

Andrea began her career as a physicist, receiving a PhD in Physics from Trinity College Dublin for research on semiconductor microcavities. She subsequently joined EPFL as a researcher working on photonic crystals before moving to CSEM, where her research evolved from photonics and plasmonics towards intelligent sensing, computer vision, machine learning and ultra-low-power AI.

In 2017, she took leadership of what became CSEM’s Edge AI & Vision activities, bringing together expertise in data science, optics, imaging, software, system architecture and data processing. She later led CSEM’s Data & AI activities before being appointed CTO in 2025.

Her work today sits at the intersection of science, technology and management, with a particular interest in how emerging technologies can be translated from research into industrial applications and how organizations can make effective strategic choices around technology and innovation

Current Research

Andrea’s current interests focus on the intersection between emerging technologies, industrial innovation and technology strategy.

A central theme is resource-constrained AI: how machine learning can be made sufficiently efficient to operate on edge devices and within physical products, where energy, computing resources, data and connectivity are limited. This includes efficient neural architectures, intelligent sensing, Edge AI and the integration of AI with novel computing and sensing technologies.

A second area of interest is the translation of emerging technologies into industrial impact. This includes understanding how technologies move from scientific advances to scalable industrial solutions, how combinations of technologies create new capabilities, and how organizations can identify where technological innovation can improve existing operations, enhance products and services, or enable new business models.

Her work at EPFL increasingly connects these technological questions with digital transformation and innovation management, examining how executives and organizations can assess emerging technologies, make strategic technology choices and successfully integrate AI and other deep technologies into their organizations.