Denis Jabaudon is the Director of the Department of Basic Neurosciences. His research team is studying how different types of neurons are genetically programmed during development to assemble into circuits, and how these processes are impaired in neurodevelopmental disorders.

In his practice as a neurologist at Geneva University Hospital, Denis Jabaudon regularly sees patients whose symptoms are the result of slowly progressive processes, sometimes having started invisibly in childhood or even during embryonic growth. Through his research within the Synapsy Center, he hopes to pinpoint the genes and cellular abnormalities that underlie some of these disorders in order to develop intervention strategies before symptoms appear.

His work on the mechanisms of neuronal circuit assembly during cortical development has recently earned him several prestigious prizes, including most recently the Roger de Spoelberch Prize (2024) and the Gill Translational Transformative Investigator Award (2024).