Mapping the human brain using AI (Université Paris-Saclay)

30 July 2026

Bertrand Thirion is a research director at the Inria Centre of Université Paris-Saclay and a member of the Mind project team, run jointly with the NeuroSpin centre of CEA Paris-Saclay. He has also been a member of the French Academy of Sciences since January 2026.

His expertise, at the intersection of computer science, applied mathematics and neuroscience, focuses on modelling brain function through imaging, with potential applications in understanding and diagnosing neurodegenerative diseases.

After graduating from the École Polytechnique in 1998, Bertrand Thirion continued his studies at Télécom Paris for two years, whilst also obtaining a Master’s degree in Mathematics, Vision and Learning (MVA) from the ENS Paris-Saclay. He specialised in image processing applied to neuroscience under the supervision of Olivier Faugeras, a researcher at the Inria Sophia Antipolis centre and a pioneer in computer vision, who supervised his PhD from 2000 to 2003. Attracted by the imminent establishment of the CEA Paris-Saclay’s NeuroSpin centre, Bertrand Thirion returned to the Île-de-France region to undertake a postdoctoral fellowship from 2003 to 2005. There, he contributed to the emergence of the concept of « decoding » brain activity, in collaboration with the neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene. […]

Full story on the Univ. Paris-Saclay website

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