Institutes & Facilities

EPFL

The Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne had 14,072 students and 6,441 staff in autumn 2025. It is organised in five schools – architecture, civil and environmental engineering; basic sciences; engineering; computer and communication sciences; and life sciences – and the College of Management of Technology. See From a private school to a federal campus.

Swiss Plasma Center and TCV

EPFL’s centre for plasma physics and fusion, part of its School of Basic Sciences. In Lausanne it runs the TCV tokamak, the TORPEX device for basic plasma physics and research on low-temperature plasmas; its superconductivity group works at PSI in Villigen, where it operates the SULTAN test facility. See A fusion laboratory by the lake, The tokamak that changes shape and Beyond the tokamak.

University of Lausanne (UNIL)

The university traces its origins to the Académie founded in 1537 to train ministers of the church; as the only French-language Protestant school of theology, it gained a certain renown. Its faculties grew in number over the following centuries, and in 1890 it received the name and status of a university. From 1970 it gradually moved from the old town around the cathedral and the castle to Dorigny, on the lakeside next to today’s EPFL.

UNIL has seven faculties: Theology and Sciences of Religions; Law, Criminal Justice and Public Administration; Arts; Social and Political Science; Business and Economics (HEC); Geosciences and Environment; and Biology and Medicine. The last two were founded in 2003. According to its 2025 annual report, the university has more than 17,600 students, 59 per cent of them women, and more than 4,900 staff; Biology and Medicine, Social and Political Science and HEC have the most students.

UNIL works on three sites: Dorigny, the CHUV and Epalinges. Since the end of the 20th century it has worked on closer cooperation with EPFL and with the universities of Geneva and Neuchâtel; one visible result is the joint UNIL–EPFL continuing education, which in 2025 offered 334 programmes with 5,992 participants.

CHUV, the university hospital

The Centre hospitalier universitaire vaudois is the university hospital of the canton of Vaud and one of UNIL’s three sites. In 2025 it had 12,957 staff, 67 per cent of them women, from 115 nationalities, and 1,432 beds. That year it treated 53,583 inpatients and 99,877 emergencies, 3,246 children were born there, and its budget was, in round figures, CHF 2 billion.

SwissTech Convention Center

A conference centre on the EPFL campus, inaugurated in April 2014, with up to 3,000 seats; its main hall seats 2,200. See Conferences & Events.