MEET THE TEAM
Pierre Bourdillon
NeuroSurgeon & Director of the Titan Laboritary
After completing his medical studies at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital at Sorbonne Université and specializing in neurosurgery, he was appointed Chief Resident in Neurosurgery at the Hospices Civils de Lyon under the supervision of Professor Marc Guénot, specializing in epilepsy surgery. In 2018, he joined the Department of Neurosurgery at the Hôpital Fondation Adolphe de Rothschild in Paris.
Alongside his medical training, Pierre Bourdillon pursued a parallel academic track in fundamental science and completed a PhD under the supervision of Professor Lionel Naccache at the Paris Brain Institute at Sorbonne Université. Following his doctoral work, he joined the Cortical Physiology Laboratory at Harvard University as a visiting researcher through the Franco-American Fulbright Monahan Program. Upon returning to France in 2022, he joined Université Paris Cité, where he established the TITAN research team.
In neurosurgery, Pierre Bourdillon specializes in epilepsy surgery and the management of intraparenchymal brain pathologies, particularly through awake neurosurgical procedures. He is also actively involved in vascular neurosurgery.
Together with Professor Marc Guénot, he contributed to the development of radiofrequency thermocoagulation of epileptic foci guided by stereoelectroencephalography (SEEG guided RF-TC), publishing the seminal in vivo studies in animal models, followed by several clinical studies in humans and was responsible for to the establishment of national guidlines. He also participated in the introduction of robotic stereoelectroencephalography techniques in France.
During his time at Harvard University, Pierre Bourdillon developed expertise in advanced electrophysiological recording techniques, including laminar recordings, single-unit recordings, and micro-electrocorticography. Beyond the development of these innovative electrophysiological approaches, the primary research focus of the TITAN research team is neural decoding and encoding, with translational applications in cognitive neuroscience, neurological disorders, and brain–computer interfaces.
Over the next five years, Pierre Bourdillon aims to further develop the TITAN research team, with a primary focus on the creation of neural encoding and decoding models. This objective requires the acquisition of new brain data across multiple spatial scales, ranging from invasive recordings of single neurons to non-invasive recordings of whole-brain activity using magnetoencephalography (MEG). In addition to the development of the clinical infrastructures necessary for acquiring these novel datasets, this work also involves the continued development of innovative computational models and new artificial intelligence architectures. Beyond the scope of the TITAN research group itself, this initiative will be pursued on a broader international scale through the Digital Brain Project.
The overarching goal is to move toward the first translational applications of this research, including:
Publications & Preprints
Pierre Bourdillon - Google Scholar →
