Stephan Brunner is a senior research physicist (MER) at the Swiss Plasma Center (SPC) at EPFL, Lausanne. He obtained his PhD in Physics in 1997 for his work on simulations of microinstabilities in magnetic confinement devices. From 1998 to 2001 he was part of the Research Staff at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), working on numerical modeling of laser-plasma interaction, in collaboration with the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL). In 2001 he joined the private company Locus Pharmaceuticals Inc in Blue Bell, PA, USA, to work on the development of molecular modeling codes for the design of therapeutic compounds. He returned to the Theory and Numerical Simulation group at the SPC in 2003, developing grid-based and particle-based methods for kinetic and gyrokinetic simulations applied to various problems in both magnetic and inertial fusion plasmas, directing PhD theses, as well as teaching graduate and undergraduate level courses.