CV Science

Stéphanie Debette MD, PhD, Professor of Epidemiology & Neurologist

Course and current status

Stéphanie Debette, MD PhD, is Professor of Epidemiology/Public Health at the university of Bordeaux and practicing neurologist at Bordeaux University Hospital since 2014. She serves as the current Director of the Bordeaux Population Health research center (University of Bordeaux – Inserm U1219). Between 2018 and 2022 she served as vice-president for external relations at the University of Bordeaux and was the inaugural chair of the ENLIGHT European University Alliance board of directors (2019-22).

Dr. Debette completed a residency in Neurology and a Stroke Fellowship at Lille University Hospital. She also holds a master degree in statistical genetics (Paris 11 university) and a PhD in Epidemiology (Lille university and Pasteur Institute Lille, France). After a research fellowship in clinical neuroscience at St George's University Hospital, London, UK, she worked for two years as a post-doctoral research fellow at Boston University School of Medicine, within the Framingham Heart Study neurology research team. She returned to France with a Chair of Excellence from the French National Research Agency (ANR) and worked as an Associate Professor at University of Versailles St Quentin en Yvelines and Inserm U708 (Paris 6 university, Neuroepidemiology) and subsequently Lariboisière Hospital (department of neurology) and Inserm U1161 (Paris 7 University, genetics and pathophysiology of cerebrovascular disease).

Scientific summary

Prof. Debette has been leading large collaborative genomic and epidemiological studies on stroke, cognitive traits, and imaging markers of brain aging, especially cerebral small vessel disease, aiming to decipher the molecular mechanisms underlying brain aging and to improve prevention and treatment of stroke and dementia. She has co-authored 200+ papers (including first or last author papers in Nature, Nat Genet, Lancet Neurol, BMJ). She has been leading a European Research Council grant, is principal investigator of a large national investment for the future grant on cerebral small vessel disease (RHU-SHIVA) and has been coordinating or contributes to several European grants. She obtained a Chair from the University of Bordeaux initiative of excellence, was awarded the Claude Pompidou Foundation prize for dementia research, the scientific excellence award of the European Stroke Organization, and the National Order of Merit medal. A former Fulbright and Bettencourt-Schueller fellow and adjunct associate professor at Boston University, she was a visiting professor at Kyoto University. She initiated and coordinates the CADISP consortium on on genetic and environmental risk factors of cervical artery dissections, serves in the research steering committee of the CHARGE consortium and chaired the International Stroke Genetics Consortium (ISGC) between 2017 and 2019.