Grégoire Courtine

Mission Our mission is to design innovative interventions to restore sensorimotor functions after CNS disorders, especially spinal cord injury, and to translate our findings into effective clinical applications capable of improving the quality of life of people with neuromotor impairments. Grégoire Courtine was originally trained in Mathematics and Physics, but received his PhD degree in Experimental Medicine from the University of Pavia, Italy, and the INSERM Plasticity and Motricity, in France, in 2003. From 2004-2007, he held a Post-doctoral Fellow position at the Brain Research Institute, University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) under the supervision of Dr. Reggie Edgerton, and was a research associate for the Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation (CDRF). In 2008, he became Assistant Professor at the faculty of Medicine of the University of Zurich where he established his own research laboratory. In 2012, he was nominated Associate Professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL) where he holds the International paraplegic foundation (IRP) chair in spinal cord repair at the Center for Neuroprosthetics and the Brain Mind Institute. He published several articles proposing radically new approaches for restoring function after spinal cord injury, which were discussed in national and international press extensively. He received numerous honors and awards such as the 2007 UCLA Chancellor’s award for excellence in post-doctoral research and the 2009 Schellenberg Prize for his innovative research in spinal cord injury awarded by the International Foundation of Research in Paraplegia. ResearchTo achieve this goal We are developing multifaceted neuroprosthetic systems, robotic interfaces, and advanced neurorehabilitation procedures that we combine with neuroregenerative interventions. Using genetically modified mice, optogenetics, and novel viral tools, we also seek to uncover the neural mechanisms underlying the control of locomotion in intact animals, as well as the processes that reestablish motor functions after neuromotor disorders Teaching & PhD PhD Students Alejandro Rodriguez Guajardo, Marc Khoury, Emma Farina, Icare Sakr, Camille Marie Mélodie Frayssinhes, Philippe José Emile René Forero, Ruijia Wang, Luca Robert Liebi, Achilleas Laskaratos, Chen Chen, Mark Adam Hinkle, Paula Sanchez Lopez, Martin Picek, Vi Anh Nguyen, Lou Colette Kohler Voinov, Jules Luo-Han Julien Orsat Past EPFL PhD Students Nikolaus Wenger, Janine Beauparlant, Lucia Florinda Friedli Wittler, Léonie Asboth, Mark Andrew Anderson, Galyna Pidpruzhnykova, Jérôme Gandar, Camille Georgette Marie Le Goff-Mignardot, Sabry Barlatey, Kay Alexander Bartholdi, Selin Anil, Nathan Greiner, Salif Axel Komi, Robin Jonathan Demesmaeker, Andreas Rowald, Newton Cho, Marco Milano, Nicolò Macellari, Carmina Andrea Galvez Solano, Matthieu Gautier, Sergio Daniel Hernandez, Aasta Parin Gandhi, Victor Perez Puchalt, Inssia Dewany, Yue Yang Teo, Thibault Jean Etienne Collin Past EPFL PhD Students as codirector Marco Bonizzato, Sophie Marie Marthe Wurth, Emanuele Formento, Flavio Raschella, Miroslav Caban, Alice Julie Bruel, Pedro Abranches De Carvalho Courses Translational neuroengineering NX-423 This course integrates knowledge in basic, systems, clinical and computational neuroscience, and engineering with the goal of translating this integrated knowledge into the development of novel methods, technology for the clinical application for patients suffering from neuropsychiatric disorders. Awards UCLA Chancellor's award 2008 Schellenberg Prize 2010 Brain Computer Interface (BCI) Award (1st place) 2022 BioAlps Academia Award 2022 2022 Roger de Spoelberch Prize, Fondation Roger De Spoelberch 2022 IET A F Harvey Engineering Research Prize 2020 Rolex Award for Enterprise 2019 Robert Bing prize from Swiss Academy of Medical Sciences 2021 Leenaards Foundation Science Prize Leenaards foundation 2021