Gilles Laurent, Director

Personal data

Born: August 9, 1960; Casablanca, Morocco
Nationality: French

Short Bio

Gilles Laurent grew up in Morocco and France, and holds a doctorate in veterinary medicine from the Ecole Nationale Vétérinaire de Toulouse (France) and a PhD in Neuroethology from the Université Paul Sabatier (Toulouse, France) (both in 1986). Between 1985 and1989, he was a postdoctoral fellow, Locke Research Fellow of the Royal Society and Research Fellow of Downing College at the University of Cambridge (UK), while doing research in the laboratory of Malcolm Burrows. In 1990, he moved to Pasadena, California (USA) to join the Biology Division faculty at the California Institute of Technology, where he was the Lawrence Hanson Professor of Biology and Computation & Neural Systems until 2011. In 2008, he became Director at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt (Germany), where he has been located since 2009. 

Research Experience

2009 -             
Director, Max Planck Institute for Brain Research, Frankfurt, Germany
2008                
Visiting Scholar, Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France
2005                
Visiting Scholar, Clark Center, Stanford University, USA
1990 - 2011    
Professor, Caltech, Pasadena, USA
1985 - 1990   
Postdoctoral Research, University of Cambridge, UK
1983                
Visitor, Technische Universität München, Germany
1983                
Visitor, Max Planck Institute for Behavioral Physiology, Huber Department, Seewiesen, Germany
1982 - 1985    
Pre-doctoral Research, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France
1982                
Visitor, Laboratory for Energy-related Health Research, UC Davis, USA