1/1/2010

Pierre Magistretti

Professor Pierre Magistretti has been endorsed by IBRO's Governing Council as the next Secretary-General of IBRO. His three-year term of office begins in January 2010. From this month until he takes up office, Professor Magistretti will be Secretary-General-Elect, working closely with Professor Marina Bentivoglio, current Secretary-General of IBRO. 

Since April 2008 Pierre Magistretti has been Professor and Director, Brain Mind Institute, Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL), Lausanne, Switzerland (joint appointment with UNIL-CHUV (University of Lausanne Medical School and Hospitals)), where he had been Professor and Co-Director from May 2005. From 1988 to 2001 he was Professor of Physiology, University of Lausanne Medical School; in 2001 he was appointed Co-Chairman of the Department of Physiology, University of Lausanne Medical School. Between 1996 and 2000 he was Vice-Dean of the Preclinical Departments, University of Lausanne Medical School. 

Professor Magistretti is currently Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Board of CIBM (Centre d'Imagerie Biomédicale, an Imaging Consortium of the Universities, University Hospitals of Lausanne and Geneva and of Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne). Other distinguished positions include: Member, Conseil national de la recherche, Swiss National Science Foundation; Member, Board of Trustees, Human Frontier Science Program; President, Federation of European Neuroscience Societies (FENS) (2002-2004); Vice Chairman, European Dana Alliance for the Brain (EDAB); President, Swiss Society for Neuroscience (1997-1999). 

Of his many awards received, the most recent was his election as Professor at the Collège de France, Paris, where he held the International Chair from 2007 to 2008. 

While at the University of Lausanne Medical School and the Brain-Mind Institute, Pierre Magistretti's group discovered some of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that underlie the coupling between neuronal activity and energy consumption by the brain. This work has considerable ramifications for the understanding of the origin of the signals detected with the current functional brain imaging techniques used in neurologic and psychiatric research. Other fields of research include: Cellular and molecular bases of brain energy metabolism; Behavioral, cellular and molecular determinants of neuronal and glial plasticity;Energy metabolism in neuropsychiatric disorders; Cellular and molecular bases of functional brain imaging; and Functions of glia.