École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne QS #22

EPFL is one of Europe's most entrepreneurial technical universities, having crossed the 500 spin-off mark with a dense support ecosystem (Startup Launchpad incubator, Innogrant program, EPFL Innovation Park) and startups raising hundreds of millions of CHF per year. It ranks among the world's strongest founder-producing institutions, though it sits just below the very top US schools like Stanford and MIT in absolute venture scale.

• EPFL has crossed the 500 spin-off mark, including 23 new spin-offs in 2023
• EPFL startups raised a near-record CHF 470 million in 2023 (CHF 769 million including Innovation Park firms and the CHF 235.8 million Oculis IPO)
• Innogrant program provides CHF 100,000 for a one-year founder salary to develop a spin-off while hosted in an EPFL lab
• EPFL Innovation Park hosts 116 spin-offs, plus 31 startups in the La Forge co-working space
• Student-focused programs include the 12-week Changemakers program and the Blaze Startup Accelerator
• Previous record year 2016 saw 25 spin-offs founded and close to CHF 400 million raised

EPFL is one of Europe's leading research universities, with over 350 laboratories, a strong Nature Index presence, and major recurring success in competitive ERC and SNSF funding. It pairs high research output across physics, computer science, AI, and life sciences with world-class facilities and Nobel-linked imaging research.

• Over 350 laboratories and research groups; consistently ranked among the world's top 20 universities (QS 2024)
• In 2025 EPFL researchers won 33 Horizon Europe grants, including seven ERC Starting Grants and seven ERC Advanced Grants under the 2024 call
• SNSF Fall 2024 Project Funding awarded CHF 25,757,657 to 28 EPFL-led projects
• Dubochet Center for Imaging (DCI), a joint EPFL, UNIL, UNIGE and UNIBE initiative named after cryo-EM Nobel laureate Jacques Dubochet (Chemistry 2017)
• Active research in quantum science, AI/machine learning, robotics, semiconductors, and sustainable energy, including the ByzFL federated-learning library from the Distributed Computing Laboratory
• Tracked in the Nature Index as a leading Swiss institution for high-quality natural-science output

EPFL combines a world-leading research faculty with a strong culture of having senior, star professors teach core bachelor and master courses, including its president and several Highly Cited Researchers. Coverage of who teaches which exact course is partly drawn from EPFL's public course catalog and lab pages.

• Tobias J. Kippenberg, Full Professor of Physics (Laboratory of Photonics and Quantum Measurement) and a Highly Cited Researcher, teaches physics and photonics courses at EPFL.
• Nicola Marzari, Chair of Theory and Simulation of Materials and a Highly Cited Researcher, teaches materials simulation courses.
• Anastasia Ailamaki, Professor of Computer Science (DIAS lab) and a leading database systems researcher, teaches in the computer science program.
• Pierre Vandergheynst, Full Professor of Electrical Engineering and former Vice-Provost for Education, teaches signal processing and data science courses.
• Martin Vetterli, EPFL President and Chair of Communication Systems, is known for teaching signal processing despite his leadership role.
• Michael Bronstein and Samy Bengio, globally recognized AI researchers, are active in teaching machine learning at EPFL.

EPFL has a strong, internationally active alumni network of roughly 45,000 graduates (about 30,000 in the directory) with a notable entrepreneurial output, though about 70 percent stay in Switzerland, making its global reach solid but more regional than the very top US peers.

• Alumni network of around 45,000 graduates worldwide, with an online directory of about 30,000 contacts; roughly 70 percent are based in Switzerland
• Daniel Borel, EPFL physics engineering graduate (1973), co-founded Logitech in 1981
• Raquel Urtasun, EPFL alumna, founder and CEO of self-driving company Waabi and full professor at the University of Toronto
• Mina Konakovic Lukovic, EPFL alumna, became a tenure-track professor in EECS at MIT
• Strong startup pipeline: 18 companies in the 2022 TOP 100 Swiss startups were founded by EPFL alumni
• Steve Anavi, co-founder of fintech Qonto, received the EPFL Alumni Award 2025

EPFL runs a high-profile Campus Lectures series that regularly brings Nobel laureates, Fields medalists, public intellectuals and leading entrepreneurs to its Lausanne campus, and it counts notable founders among its alumni and visiting figures.

• EPFL Campus Lectures series features scientists, Nobel laureates, entrepreneurs and cultural figures
• For its 50th anniversary, EPFL invited 13 prestigious speakers including five Nobel laureates
• Speakers have included Yuval Noah Harari (author) and Alessio Figalli (2018 Fields Medalist)
• Other speakers: Saul Perlmutter (2011 Nobel Prize in Physics), Didier Queloz (Nobel laureate), and economist Mariana Mazzucato (UCL)
• Notable EPFL-linked founders include Daniel Borel (co-founder of Logitech) and Andre Borschberg (co-founder of Solar Impulse)
• EPFL annually awards Doctor Honoris Causa titles to preeminent researchers and figures

EPFL sits in the dense Lake Geneva 'Health Valley' ecosystem, sharing its campus area with the University of Lausanne (UNIL), the CHUV university hospital, IMD, ECAL and HES-SO, while anchoring the EPFL Innovation Park. Strong internal cross-disciplinary mixing plus high external institutional and corporate density make it world-leading on this dimension.

• EPFL Innovation Park hosts around 250 high-tech companies (startups, SMEs and corporate R&D), surrounded by about 11,000 researchers and over 400 labs
• On-campus corporate R&D labs include Cisco, Logitech, Nestle and Credit Suisse
• Immediate neighbors: University of Lausanne (UNIL), CHUV university hospital, Ludwig Cancer Research, plus IMD business school, ECAL design school and HES-SO
• Campus Biotech in Geneva is jointly run by EPFL, UNIGE and the Wyss Center, with HUG hospital as a partner
• Since 2000 EPFL has produced 293 spin-offs, with more than 60 created in the past three years across health, IT and hardware
• The surrounding Lake Geneva 'Health Valley' region is home to over 750 life science companies

EPFL provides substantial institution-backed support including merit fellowships, need-based social scholarships and one of Europe's leading startup grant programs. Its Master Excellence Fellowships and Innogrant scheme make it strong, though merit awards reach only a small share of students.

• Master Excellence Fellowships worth CHF 10,000 per semester (up to CHF 40,000 over a two-year Master), plus guaranteed housing for incoming students
• Only about 3% of master's students receive an Excellence Fellowship, awarded on academic record
• EPFL Social Scholarship is a need-based grant for students in financial difficulty who have completed at least one year of study
• Innogrant startup program gives founders up to CHF 100,000 as a one-year salary to build an EPFL spin-off
• Since 2005 Innogrant awarded CHF 21 million across 206 grants, supporting 150 startups including two unicorns and helping raise over CHF 1.685 billion
• New Bachelor's excellence fellowships introduced to recruit top undergraduates

EPFL's tuition is remarkably low at about CHF 730 per semester (~CHF 1.5k a year), rising to roughly CHF 2,190 per semester for certain non-resident students from fall 2025, still cheap versus Western private universities. The offset is Switzerland's very high cost of living: students should budget around CHF 29k a year for Lausanne. Near-free tuition keeps it affordable in relative terms despite one of the priciest countries in the world.

• Tuition is about CHF 730 per semester (~CHF 1,500/year), tripling to ~CHF 2,190 per semester for some non-residents from fall 2025
• Lausanne living costs are about CHF 29,000 a year, among the highest globally
• Mandatory Swiss health insurance (CHF 80 to 120/month) and dorm rent (CHF 700 to 1,000) add up
• Very low tuition partly compensates for the extremely expensive city
• Even tripled, non-resident tuition stays far below US/UK-international rates

EPFL offers a vibrant, livable campus on the shores of Lake Geneva with nearly 90 student associations and a large shared UNIL+EPFL sports program, backed by formal mental-health and wellbeing services, though surveys note rising fatigue across degree progression.

• Almost 90 student associations on campus, with all students automatically enrolled in AGEPoly, the General Student's Association that organizes athletic and social events
• The Service Sport Sante UNIL+EPFL offers courses in more than 125 disciplines, open to the whole community, plus free weekly 30-minute sessions
• Dedicated Well-being and Inclusion (WINC) unit and a Trust and Support Network providing confidential listening, plus on-campus psychiatric consultations via Student Affairs
• Free recreational amenities on campus including ping pong tables, petanque courts, street workout equipment and two Box-Up sports equipment stations
• A 2022 mental health and wellbeing survey found fatigue levels increase as students progress through their degree program, prompting a task force and focus groups
• Free mindfulness sessions and a student coaching program pairing experienced students with new entrants; Club Montagne and Erasmus Student Network run off-campus excursions

EPFL integrates work and study tightly through a mandatory industry internship or industry Master's project for engineering Master's students, and graduate outcomes are excellent, with a net employment rate near 92% and salaries well above the Swiss average. This makes it world-leading on work-study balance and employability.

• Engineering Master's students must complete an industry internship (short, minimum 8 weeks in summer; or long, minimum 6 months during a semester) or an industry Master's project before graduating.
• Class of 2022 net employment rate was 91.9% for graduates in Switzerland and 91.1% across all countries.
• Graduates took on average 9.2 weeks and 13 applications to find a job; 92% reported satisfaction with their professional situation.
• Average salary in Switzerland was CHF 88,753 in the private sector and CHF 84,026 in the public sector; alumni median gross yearly salary between CHF 120,000 and 140,000.
• In 21% of cases EPFL helped establish the link with the employer, typically through an internship or an industry Master's project; EPFL recommends an internship salary of CHF 2,000 to 2,500 per month.