PROJECT

Xavier Levecq contributes boundless creativity in the development of Imagine Eyes’ products. Before the inception of Imagine Eyes, he also cofounded Imagine Optic together with Samuel Bucourt and designed new wavefront sensors devices - now recognized worldwide as the reference for optical metrology - that propelled their venture into an international success.

Earlier, recruited by CILAS-EADS while still at university, Xavier developed high-tech optronic systems for « StarWars » military applications based on advanced space optics technologies. Now author of more than 30 patents, Xavier graduated from the Institut d’Optique Graduate School in 1993.

Nicolas Chateau, PhD, has built his career on bringing innovative ophthalmic products to market. He has driven Imagine Eyes to commercialize the rtx1 retinal camera, a breakthrough imaging device that allows doctors to examine the back of the eye with cellular resolution.

Since he cofounded the company in 2003, Nicolas has established strong partnerships with leading academic and clinical centers, and secured several millions Euros in governmental and European funding. Previously, he worked at developing new high-tech optical products for major companies including Coherent, Ocular Sciences and Essilor.

Fabrice Crivello is research director at the CEA. His works are at the interface between methodology in neuroimaging and research in cognitive neuroimaging and neuroepidemiology. 

Following university studies in signal and image processing, he joined the GIN in 1993. Within the SHFJ in Orsay, he obtained a PhD in biological and medical engineering on the detection of cerebral activations with PET. At the Cyceron center in Caen, he completed a post-doctoral internship aiming at building a multi-scale and multi-modality cerebral imaging database. In 1998, he was recruited as a research officer at the CEA and obtained his authorization to conduct research in March 2006. Since 2011 he has been assigned to Bordeaux, where, he and the GIN, have joined the IMN in 2016.

His research is structured along two complementary axes. The first concerns the development, implementation and distribution of automated procedures dedicated to the extraction of structural cerebral phenotypes. The second one concerns the study of these phenotypes in the context of the exploitation of large cerebral imaging cohorts in order to :

• characterize cerebral anatomical asymmetries, their factors of variability and their genetic determinant;
• map the maturation and aging of cerebral anatomy.

Thierry Couffinhal is Professor of Cardiology and head of the clinical unit of the CEPTA, «Exploration, Prevention and Care Center for Atherosclerosis ». This Unit is dedicated to exploration, prevention and long-term treatment and management of atherosclerotic diseases (angina and myocardial infarction, stroke, peripheral arterial disease) and primary prevention in high-risk patients. Explorations are based on non-invasive up-to-date echographic and other vascular tools. Management is based on a multidisciplinary approach integrating large therapeutic education programs.

Thierry Couffinhal currently participates in many industrial or academic clinical research programs. has been at the head of an Inserm Unit (French Institute of Health and Medical Research) since 2007. The laboratory explores the role of major signaling pathways (Wnt / Hedgehog / JAK2) in vascular biology and thrombosis during development and diseases.

In the last 5 years, he obtained grants from the Fondation Recherche Médicale (FRM), the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR), the Fédération Française de Cardiologie, the health ministry (Programme hospitalier de recherche clinique - PHRC), the Aquitaine Region. He is a member of Société Française de Cardiologie, Société Française d’Angiogenèse and has served on the Scientific Council of the University of Bordeaux (2007-2013). He is also a partner in the European consortium EVGN “European Vascular Genomic Network”, FP6 (2005-2010).

Stéphanie Debette is a PUPH in epidemiology/public health at the University of Bordeaux (INSERM U1219, Bordeaux Population Health research center) where she leads a genetic and integrative epidemiology team on neurological and vascular diseases, and a neurologist at Bordeaux University Hospital. Her research focuses on the genetic and environmental determinants of stroke, MRI markers of brain aging, small vessel disease, and cognition.

Since 2004, she has initiated and coordinated the international CADISP consortium on genetic and environmental risk factors for cervical artery dissection and stroke in young subjects. She chaired the International Stroke Genetics consortium between 2017 and 2019, is a member of the scientific committee of the Cohorts for Heart and Aging Research in Genomic Epidemiology (CHARGE) consortium, and sits on the board of directors of the World Stroke Organization. She is co-author of 200 papers, including first or last author in Nat Genet, Lancet Neurol, BMJ. She has been awarded an ERC Starting Grant and coordinates the JPND-BRIDGET project on (epi-)genetic determinants of MRI markers of brain aging.

Rodolphe Thiebaut is a medical doctor, with specialization in Public Health. He holds a PhD in Biostatistics from Bordeaux University.

He started his research carrier at the Institut National de Sante et de la Recherche Medicale (INSERM) as a research scientist between 2002 and 2009 and as research director between 2010 and 2013. He has been a research fellow in the Immunobiology Division of the Institute of Child Health (London, UK) in 2007.

Philippe Boutinaud is currently Technical and Innovation Director of the Fealinx Group (turnover: €11M, 70 employees). He obtained his PhD in Computer Science in 1993 at the University of Paris Sud and then began an industrial career in the world of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) and digital simulation at SDRC (Structural Dynamic Research Corporation) as an R&D engineer and then head of a software development team. In 1999, he took part in the creation of the Cadesis company, which became Fealinx.

His field of technical and scientific expertise includes governance, specification and software engineering on development projects in the fields of PLM, KM (Knowledge Management), CAD (Computer Aided Design), digital simulation and finally data management and machine learning in biomedical imaging. He was the industrial leader of four CIFRE theses carried out at Fealinx, was the coordinator of the ANR ISemantec project (ANR-06-TLOG-0018), coordinator of the ANR BIOMIST project (ANR-13-CORD-0007) and is the co-director of the LABCOM Ginesislab (ANR 16-LCV2-0006-01).

Marc Joliot, Ph.D. is a senior researcher in multimodal biomedical imaging at the French Atomic Energy Commission (CEA) in the “Groupe d’Imagerie Neurofonctionnelle” of  “Institut des maladie neurodégénératives” UMR5293

Specialist in multimodal imaging, acquisition and cohort processing in brain imaging, his primary focus is on intrinsic connectivity observed in functional MRI in the resting state.  The second focus is on the development of new methodology in the analysis and management of bio-imaging data such as AAL (11K citation index) and the AICHA atlas, or resting network classification algorithm (MICCA).

Jean-François KOROBELNIK is professor of ophthalmology at the Bordeaux University Hospital since 1999, Head of Department since May 2013. He is involved in the Research focusing on the epidemiology of eye diseases (Consortium E3), on macula disorders. The care concerns retinal diseases treated medically or surgically (AMD, Retinal detachment, Membrane and macular hole...).

He is a member of the French Society of Ophtalmology (President from May 2013 to May 2015), the American Academy of Ophtalmology, the Association for Research in Vision and Ophtalmology, the American Society of Retina Specialists, Euretina, the Club Francophone des Spécialistes de la Rétine (President from May 2017 to May 2019) and the Club Jules Gonin (Executive committee member).

Isabelle Bourdel-Marchasson is professor of geriatric medicine since 2002 at the University of Bordeaux (UB). She received her MD from UB and qualified in geriatrics, internal medicine and endocrinology. She also received her PhD in the Center of Magnetic resonance in biological systems (CRMSB), after a master in nutrition.

Since 1990, she is medical practitioner in geriatric medicine at CHU of Bordeaux. She is the head of a post-emergency acute care geriatric unit and of the outpatient hospital dedicated to comprehensive gerontological assessment in frail older patients.

Dr Hélène Jacqmin-Gadda, PhD, born in 1968, defended her thesis in 1993 and is a researcher in biostatistics at Inserm since 1996. She is Research Director of the Biostatistics team at the Inserm U1219 Bordeaux Population Health Centre since 1994.

Her main work is focused on the development of models for the analysis of longitudinal data and the occurrence of events in order to study the natural history, risk factors and progression of dementia in the elderly, especially in Alzheimer's disease and cognitive ageing.

François Tison (PU-PH, >260 publications, H-Index WOS: 53) is Professor of Neurology at Bordeaux University and consultant neurologist at the University Hospital of Bordeaux. He is coordinator of the Bordeaux Center of Excellence for Neurodegenerative disorders (BIND, https://bind.u-bordeaux.fr/en/), head of the Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases-clinical branch (IMNc, http://www.imnc-bordeaux.org/) and deputy director of the Institute for Neurodegenerative Diseases (IMN, CNRS UMR 5293- http://www.imn-bordeaux.org/).

He conducted his clinical and research career in the field of neurodegenerative diseases by exploring several disciplines from basic, clinical and translational research to epidemiology. He is PI on multiple academic, industry or foundation-sponsored clinical research studies on neurodegenerative disease. His current interest is focused on non-drug therapies based on the mindfulness in neurodegenerative diseases.

Born 27/01/1973, David-Alexandre Trégouët was recruited at INSERM as a research associate 2^nd class in 1999 just after completing his PhD in statistical genetics.

Promoted 1st class Research Director in 2019, his expertise covers the developments and the applications of statistical and bioinformatics methodologies to disentangle the molecular epidemiology of cardiovascular diseases, with a strong focus on venous thromboembolism.

Dr. Clarisse Longo dos Santos, PhD, co-founder and VP of Product Management of Qynapse, is responsible for the tasks related to the development and use of the products, and is involved in the clinical validation of the medical device and the contact with partners.

She obtained her PhD in 2010, at Concordia University, Canada, using fMRI ; she has conducted post-doctoral research at Neurospin/CEA using diffusion MRI in neurological diseases.

Cécile Delcourt has a PhD in statistics and public health and is senior researcher at Inserm U1219-Bordeaux Population Health Research Center, where she leads the LEHA (Lifelong Exposures, Health and Aging) research group.

She has a strong expertise in the epidemiology of eye diseases (in particular AMD, cataract and glaucoma). She is internationally renowned in the identification of risk factors for major eye diseases (in particular smoking, light exposure and nutrition).

Bernard Mazoyer is a professor of neuroradiology at the University Hospital and Faculty of Medicine of Bordeaux, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Neurodegenerative Diseases (IMN, CNRS, CEA, University of Bordeaux).

His current research focuses on the quantification of the sources of variability in brain morphology and function, and on the identification of early MRI markers of cerebral ageing, thanks to population neuroimaging combining MRI, psychometry and genomics. Bernard Mazoyer graduated from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan (mathematics, 1972-1976), holds a doctorate in biomathematics (1983) and medicine (1985) from the University of Paris. He did a post-doctorate at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab (USA) in the field of advanced medical imaging techniques, in particular PET and MRI (1984-1985).

Andreas Bikfalvi is an MD PhD with both scientific and clinical training. He is an exceptional class full Professor ("Professeur de Classe Exceptionnelle") and leads since more than 20 years a laboratory that is affiliated to INSERM and the University of Bordeaux (now Angiogenesis and Tumor Microenvironment Laboratory, INSERM U1029).

His main line of research is related to vascular biology (angiogenesis) and tumour biology, focusing on studies dealing with angiogenesis and with the cross talk between angiogenesis and tumour biology and, in particular, metastasis. He has  also developed unique in vivo models allowing large-scale genomic approaches and is also focused on mechanistical studies involving key players.