Marie-Christine Sawley graduated in physics and engineering at the Swiss Institute of Technology, Lausanne (EPFL) in 1980, and completed a PhD in plasma physics at the CRPP-EPFL in 1985 on analytical and numerical studies of the coupling phenomena between electromagnetic waves and magnetically confined plasmas. The simulation of solar and astrophysical plasmas formed the topic of her postdoctoral research studies at the School of Physics of the University of Sydney (Australia). At the end of 1988, she directed her career towards IT management and was appointed head of the User Consulting Group at the Scientific Computing Centre (SIC) of the EPFL. In 1994, the Steering Committee of the CRAY-EPFL Partnership on Parallel Applications appointed M.-C. Sawley manager of the Support Team of the program, a position held until the end of the partnership in 1996. She acted as an active member in a number of selection committees for HPC systems purchase and was President of the Speedup forum from 1995 to 1998. In 1997 she established the first commission at EPFL for issuing recommendations for the platform of IT services for undergrad and graduate students.

Member of the permanent CAPA bureau, in charge of services and communication, she contributed to the definition phase of the Swiss TX program, in collaboration with Compaq, and to the founding of the SOS workshop series. In 1998-1999 she worked with the ETH-Rat President F. Waldvogel on the establishment of the Swiss Virtual Campus and the first NICT-based teaching projects, and later spent a whole year on leave in Australia, focusing on NICT for higher education and HPC in academic environments.

In February 2000, M.-C.Sawley joined the Direction de la Valorisation at EPFL, and was actively involved in the design and establishment of industrial or multi-institutional partnerships such as the EPFL Alinghi collaboration and the bio-simulation research sponsorship with Hewlett-Packard. From February to June 2003, she has been heading the steering committee for the establishment of the Vital IT centre of the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics. She joined the CSCS as CEO on July, 1st, 2003.

Graduate of the Mastering the Technology Enterprise program in 1997, M.-C.Sawley is a member of EPFL http://www.epfl.ch/ and IMD alumni.