Shawn Koppenhoefer

Mission

Shawn provides IT support for the following labs at EPFL:
Laboratory of Macromolecular and Organic Materials: go.epfl.ch/LMOM-lab
Sustainable Materials Laboratory: go.epfl.ch/SML-Lab
 
Both labs have a mix of macOS, Windows, and Linux machines.
Shawn helps the lab in all details involving user-support, service-support, & hardware/software life-cycle (ordering/installation/configuration/management). He also assists in all services outside of the lab (intranet & internet).
Services include, but are not limited to, Backup, Web, Databases, Remote-Access, License-servers, etc.

As an experienced media-producer (photo/video), Shawn also produces assets for use in publications and outreach. The nature of the work produced is principally scientific presentation photography & videography but he also produces head-shots, environmental-portraits, equipment and architectural/lab images.

Current work

Shawn Koppenhoefer is the lead System-Administrator/TroubleShooter/Web-Developer of LMOM since 2012, and  System-Administrator of SML since 2023.
 
His strategy for is to use open-source software to manage the park of macOS/Windows/Linux machines (&VMs) of the lab for software installation, distribution, configuration, support and reporting (ie. Munki, AutoPkg, DeployStudio, Puppet, OTRS). He implements new requirements on the database-driven custom-CMS website (PHP/MySQL)(MVC arch.) which requires reproducing the EPFL Jahia-inspired graphic line and supporting shortcodes for managed publications, presentations, and more. He handles the backup, security, and user-support for the staff and coordinates with his sub-team (Mike & Thomas) for delegated tasks. As a photographer, he produces imagery for the researchers. 

Biography

[ed: See the detailed shawnkoppenhoefer.com pages]

Originally from Canada (Swiss-naturalized in 2022), born in 1968, Shawn completed a double-honours degree (BSc in ‘Computer-Science’ and ‘Combinatorics & Optimization’ 1990) at the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Waterloo. Six years later, at the EPFL while teaching the 1st-year course Introduction to Networks and Protocols, he published his doctoral thesis (PhD in Computer-Science ). He was invited to become 1st assistant in the Electrical Engineering Dept. at EPFL working on telecommunication-architectures with Alcatel/Orange/Siemens, developed relational databases at Charles Veillon S.A., worked on e-government applications (civilian and military) at Networkers S.A., performed system-administration/teaching/web-development at the World Health Organization collaborating center GFMER in Geneva, worked independently developing a few iOS applications in Objective-C, and finally returned to the EPFL and UNIL to do database-support, and IT-support.

In addition to his work at LMOM lab LMOM.epfl.ch, Shawn also did a 3year stint at the LTP lab (principally Windows lab) http://LTP.epfl.ch, and at the ARVE lab replaced since with "DavisGroup" (Mac/Linux)(wp.unil.ch/davisgroup). He can be found in the usual places on social media (TW,FB,YT,FL,PI, LI, GoogleScholar, ResearcherID...).