NetherlandsGrégoire Courtine
Co-founder
French neuroscientist and full Professor at EPFL since 2019, where he co-directs the Defitech Center for Interventional Neurotherapies (NeuroRestore). He completed postdoctoral work at UCLA (2004–2007) studying neural recovery after spinal cord injury and was promoted from Associate to Full Professor at EPFL in 2019. His research has demonstrated that targeted epidural electrical stimulation of the lumbar spinal cord can enable paraplegic patients to walk, swim, and cycle. He co-founded ONWARD Medical (originally GTX Medical) in 2014 alongside Jocelyne Bloch and serves as its Chief Science Officer. He and Bloch jointly received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering in 2026.