Born in Zurich and trained as a physicist, Marilyne Andersen has been conducting pioneering work at the interface between science and engineering, design, society and culture.  A leading expert in the field of daylight in relation to neuroscience and psychophysics, Full Professor and Head of the LIPID lab at EPFL, she has been Dean of the School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering (ENAC) from 2013 and 2018 and carried the development of the EPFL Fribourg associate campus (Smart Living Lab). She has been leading since 2022 a Swiss-wide research consortium on the energy transition with a focus on the future of living and working, involving 10 academic institutions and 30 partners from the public and private sectors.

Before joining EPFL, she was a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a Visiting Professor at the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (LBNL) in California and at the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD). She was a member of the Board of the global Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction from 2015 to 2024 and an expert to the Innovation Council of InnoSuisse from 2018 to 2024. She has also been on the Boards of the ArtTech and Culture du Bâti Foundations, and leverages her research in practice through OCULIGHT dynamics, a start-up she co-founded that offers specialised consulting services on daylight and its psycho-physiological effects on building occupants.

In parallel, she has been actively engaged in bridging the gap between art and science, notably since 2021 as co-curator of the exhibition entitled Lighten Up! On Biology and Time and as author of the Circa Diem immersive installation and policy-oriented fiction Droit au Jour ; these works have been on display in diverse venues such as the Seoul Biennale, the EPFL Pavilions, the Gewerbemuseum Winterthur, the Museum of Contemporary Design and Applied Arts (mudac) in Lausanne, and the MIT Museum.