History
Founded in 1853 as a private school under the name École Spéciale de Lausanne, it became the technical department of the public Académie de Lausanne in 1869. When the latter was reorganized and acquired the status of a university in 1890, the technical faculty changed its name to École d'Ingénieurs de l'Université de Lausanne. In 1946, it was renamed the École polytechnique de l'Université de Lausanne (EPUL).
In 1969, the EPUL was separated from the rest of the University of Lausanne and became a federal institute under its current name. EPFL, like ETHZ, is thus directly controlled by the Swiss federal government. In contrast, all other universities in Switzerland are controlled by their respective cantonal governments.
EPFL operates a nuclear reactor, CROCUS, a Tokamak fusion reactor, and P3 bio-hazard facilities. Following the nomination of Patrick Aebischer as president in 2000, EPFL has started to develop into the field of life sciences. It absorbed the ISREC (Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research) in 2008.
Read more about this topic: École Polytechnique Fédérale De Lausanne
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