Technologies for Development (PDF)

Silvia Hostettler studied Tropical Environmental Science at the University of Aberdeen followed by a postgraduate course on development studies with EPFL which took her to Burkina Faso for six months. Upon returning from Africa, she started working with IUCN - The World Conservation Union at IUCN headquarters in Gland. In 2001, she was recruited as Research Programme Coordinator at EPFL in the framework of the Swiss National Centre of Competence in Research North-South. At the same time, she fulfilled a mandate for backstopping regional workshops in Ethiopia, Kenya, Cuba, Bolivia, Nepal and Vietnam. In 2007, she obtained her PhD on land use change and international migration in western Mexico. From 2008 to 2012 she was based in Bangalore, India as Executive Director of swissnex, a Swiss House for Science facilitating research collaboration between Switzerland and India. Since September 2012 she is Deputy Director of the Cooperation and Development Center (CODEV) at EPFL where she is responsible for coordinating research activities and for the UNESCO Chair in Technologies for Development Conference. She is also in charge of postgraduate education offered by CODEV and gives lectures in the field of cooperation and development. Her research interests include migration, livelihood strategies, development studies, watershed management, land use change and tropical forest ecology. She has written various articles and other scientific publications on these topics.

Eileen Hazboun is of Palestinian/Jordanian origin, born in the Sudan with extensive international exposure: living in Switzerland, Australia, the United States, countries of South East Asia (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Philippines) and the South Pacific (Solomon Islands, Vanuatu). Eileen has experience in human resources working with Ernst & Young in Los Angeles; PR/Communications with the World Business Council of Sustainable Development at the time of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development in