Back to school Monday at EPFL, with construction on the new Rolex Learning Center advancing. Photo taken in June.

Lausanne, Switzerland (GenevaLunch) - EPFL, the federal polytechnic institute in Lausanne, opens its doors to students Monday with three new master’s degree options and a 15% increase in first-year and preparatory year students, who will number 1,400. The number of women, who are 26.5% of the students, has risen by 0.9%. The year promises to be a busy one for EPFL, with significant changes, first with three new options for master’s degrees. In November the new Rolex Learning Center, with its avant-garde design opens, giving the campus a more social hub with its library, cafeteria and open work and meeting spaces.

The three new study programmes:

• master’s in nuclear engineering, covering two semesters, in a programme run jointly with EPFZ, the Zurich polytechnic school, designed to provide depth in energy studies
• master’s in financial engineering, the result of collaboration between the School of Technology Management and the mathematics and information technology departments - the goal is to train financial managers who have a good grasp of new and developing technologies
• a specialization in statistics within the mathematical engineering degree, as a complement to the financial engineering degree, designed to develop highly-skilled specialists in probability and statistical methods, who are in great demand in the fields of financial analysis and risk management.

The total student population is 6,600 for the 2008-09 year, but EPFL notes that figures at universities throughout Europe are unstable until the late November, as students change programmes and move around.

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