Before her title of EPF physicist, Sylvie Villa was part of the first batch of graduates in micro-electronics from the evening engineering school in Lausanne. The integrated circuit she designed for her diploma work was at the time manufactured by EM Microelectronic Marin, the leading integrated circuit manufacturing company in Switzerland, a subsidiary of the Swatch Group since 1985.

Sylvie installed and operated a Mentor CAD/CAM system within the evening engineering school, for the design, simulation and manufacture of integrated circuits. She trained industry engineers in these tools and provided the hotline.

Subsequently, Sylvie devoted a long part of her career to teaching and integrating women into technical fields. She was responsible for the Engineering and Architecture domain at the HES-SO and director of the Equality program at the HEIG-VD. Very involved in the impact of humans, she has also always made her students aware of their future responsibility in the face of the "destiny" of the technical machines developed (obsolescence, embodied energy and life cycle, etc.). It is therefore a great pleasure for her to lead by example by diverting the primary use of these industrial machines and extending their production life.