Dr Laurène Donati is Director of the Impact Division at EPFL, where she contributes to the definition and coordination of the School’s strategy in the area of societal impact.

She previously co‑founded the EPFL Center for Imaging, which she directed from 2021 to 2025, after having coordinated the Imaging@EPFL initiative launched by EPFL’s leadership in 2019 to federate imaging activities across the institution.

A graduate of EPFL, she holds a Master’s degree in Bioengineering (2016) and a PhD in Electrical Engineering (2020). Her research focuses on the development of reconstruction methods in cryo‑electron microscopy. In this context, she was a visiting researcher at Columbia University (New York) from 2014 to 2015.

In 2014, she received the WISH Community Career Investment Award from the EPFL Foundation for Women in Sciences and Humanity «for demonstrating academic and professional excellence». She served as an elected member of the Parliament of Valais (CH) from 2013 to 2017.