Elena V. Epure joins Idiap as Research Scientist

Elena holds a PhD in Computer Science from Panthéon-Sorbonne University and has spent the past seven years as an NLP Research Scientist at Deezer, the Paris-based global music and audio-media streaming platform. She also brings a wealth of prior experience as a Software Engineer and Technical Trainer in the Netherlands and Romania.

Her research sits at the crossroads of Natural Language Processing (NLP), Recommender Systems (RecSys), and Information Retrieval (IR), with a particular focus on creative media. Elena applies NLP to better understand, personalize, and contextualize media content, and she is deeply interested in conversational interactions that enhance personalized recommendation and search.

Elena will join Idiap, bringing her research group, Language and Information Technologies, with her. At Idiap, she will collaborate with Deezer on a study examining how health and well-being podcasts are disseminated and consumed across cultures, while also seeking additional collaborative opportunities to further advance her ongoing research projects.

Elena was drawn to Idiap for its strong commitment to industrial collaboration and innovation, as well as the multidisciplinarity of its projects—both of which align closely with her human-centered approach to research. She looks forward to continuing collaborations with EPFL and other academic partners, co-supervising research projects, and contributing to teaching and guest lectures. Outside the lab, Elena is excited to experience the mountains and the outdoors of the Valais region.

Idiap is excited to welcome her and looks forward to the advances she and her team will bring.