About us

Missions

Generate high-quality scientific evidence to better understand disease mechanisms, prevent disease occurrence in the population and provide optimal care to patients.

Promote healthier lives across the lifespan, in high and low income countries

Leverage cutting-edge biotechnologies and data science to discover disease mechanisms

Translate research findings into clinical usefulness for disease prevention and patient care

Improve health services and reduce social inequalities in healthcare

Mobilize expert community to combat current and future global threats to human health

Meet our director

Rodolphe Thiébaut is a medical doctor specialising in Public health. He holds a PhD in biostatistics from the University of Bordeaux. He started his research career at the Inserm Institut National de Santé et de la Recherche Médicale in 2002 as a research scientist 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.

He is now Professor of Public Health / Biostatistics at the University of Bordeaux.

He is head of the Medical Information Department at the University Hospital of Bordeaux and project leader for the EDS@NOVA regional hospital data warehouse. He leads a research group (SISTM – Statistics for Systems Biology and Translational Medicine) devoted to the modelling and analysis of high-dimensional data mainly applied to immunology through the French Vaccine Research Institute. This group, which is embedded in the INSERM U1219 Research Centre BPH, has been recognized as an INRIA project team since January 2015.

He is also the Director of the Graduate School of Digital Public Health, coordinator of the Master of Public Health Data Science at ISPED (Institut de Santé Publique d’Epidémiologie et de Développement).

Rodolphe Thiébaut was appointed director of the Inserm U1219 research centre in April 2024. He is author/co-author of more than 300 publications in peer-reviewed journals, including New England Journal, Lancet, AIDS, Journal of Immunology, Biometrics, Statistics in Medicine, Plos Computational Biology.

Former directors

Stéphanie Debette, MD PhD, is Professor of Epidemiology/Public Health at the University of Bordeaux and practicing Neurologist at Bordeaux University Hospital.

She served as the current Director of the Bordeaux Population Health research center (University of Bordeaux – Inserm U1219) from 2022 to 2024. 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.

Stéphanie Debette, MD PhD, is Professor of Epidemiology/Public Health at the University of Bordeaux and practicing Neurologist at Bordeaux University Hospital.

Prof. Debette 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 (JPND-BRIDGET, ENLIGHT-RISE…).

She 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 serves in the research steering committee of the CHARGE consortium and chaired the International Stroke Genetics Consortium (ISGC) between 2017 and 2019. She also served as vice-president for external relations at the University of Bordeaux (2018-22) and was the inaugural chair of the ENLIGHT European University Alliance board of directors (2019-22).

Christophe Tzourio, MD PhD, is Professor of Epidemiology/Public Health at the University of Bordeaux and practicing at Bordeaux University Hospital. He was founder and first director of the Bordeaux Population Health Research Center (BPH) (2016-2021), Inserm Unit 1219 and University of Bordeaux

His research expertise focuses on epidemiology and public health of neurological and psychiatric diseases.

Roger Salamon, MD PhD, is Professor of Public Health. He was École normale supérieure former student (mathematics section). He was founder and director of the first Bordeaux Inserm Unit U330 «Epidemiology, Public Health and Development» (1990-2003), which became Inserm U593 (2003-2008). Then he founded the first research centre «Epidemiology and Biostatistics» Inserm U897 (2009-2013) at University of Bordeaux.

He was founder (1989), and first Director (1997-2005), then Honorary Director (since 2006) of the Institute of Public Health, Epidemiology and Development (ISPED) at University of Bordeaux.