Shawn Koppenhoefer
Nationality: Swiss/Canadian/German
EPFL STI IMX LMOM
MXG 134 (Bâtiment MXG)
Station 12
1015 Lausanne
+41 21 693 41 20
Office: MXG 134
EPFL › STI › IMX › LMOM
Website: https://lmom.epfl.ch/
Expertise
Shawn takes care of the messy, behind-the-scenes stuff — macs, pcs, servers, storage, operating systems, networks, EPFL services, and personal points of pain — so his colleagues can get back to doing the cool parts of research without wrestling their computers.
System Administration & User-support
macOS, Windows, Linux
Proxmox, TrueNAS, Wordpress, PHP
Scientific photography : macro and cm-scale photography.
Contact Shawn here: 💬Matrix/EPFL : https://matrix.to/#/@koppenho:epfl.ch
or via legacy channels: +41.78.697 2737 (Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage, SMS)
macOS, Windows, Linux
Proxmox, TrueNAS, Wordpress, PHP
Scientific photography : macro and cm-scale photography.
Contact Shawn here: 💬Matrix/EPFL : https://matrix.to/#/@koppenho:epfl.ch
or via legacy channels: +41.78.697 2737 (Signal, WhatsApp, iMessage, SMS)
Current work
Shawn Koppenhoefer has been the System Administrator and go-to troubleshooter for the LMOM lab since 2012 and, more recently, for the SML lab since 2023. He looks after everything that makes the digital and technical environment run smoothly: Macs, PCs, servers, storage, operating systems, networks, EPFL services, and even the personal points of pain that can distract researchers from their real work. From purchasing and installation to configuration, updates, backups, and security, Shawn ensures that hardware, software, services, and systems remain reliable and easy to use. His aim is simple: colleagues should be able to dive into the exciting parts of their research without having to wrestle with their computers nor EPFL services.
In addition, as a scientific photographer, he produces high-quality macro and centimeter-scale imagery that supports and illustrates the lab’s research.
In addition, as a scientific photographer, he produces high-quality macro and centimeter-scale imagery that supports and illustrates the lab’s research.
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.
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.
Originally from Canada (Swiss-naturalized since then), Shawn completed a double-honours degree (BSc in ‘Computer-Science' and ‘Combinatorics & Optimization' 1990) at the Faculty of Mathematics of the University of Waterloo. 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 welcomed into the role of 1st assistant in the Electrical Engineering Dept. at EPFL working on telecommunication-architectures with Alcatel/Orange/Siemens, then built relational databases at Charles Veillon S.A., followed by working on e-government applications (civilian and military) at Networkers S.A., to move into system-administration/teaching/web-development at the World Health Organization collaborating center GFMER in Geneva. He finally returned to the EPFL and UNIL to do database-support and IT-support for the researchers in multiple labs. In 2025, Shawn is at EPFL helping researchers in LMOM and SML labs.
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). Look for Shawn in the usual places on social media (TW,FB,YT,FL,PI, LI, GoogleScholar, ResearcherID...).
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). Look for Shawn in the usual places on social media (TW,FB,YT,FL,PI, LI, GoogleScholar, ResearcherID...).
Education
Ph.D.
| Formal methods and the study of how variations in network data transfer time impact efficiency. See <a href="https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/32053">Record 32053</a>.
1993 – 1997
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL)
Directed by
Jean-Dominique Decotignie
Selected publications
A formal synchronous model for distributed time-critical control-systems
S. Koppenhoefer
Published in PhD EPFL_TH1576 in