Background

Stéphanie P. Lacour is a French-Swiss bioengineer specialising in stretchable electronics. She holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology in EPFL’s School of Engineering, where she also leads the Laboratory for Soft Bioelectronic Interfaces (LSBI). She was the founding director of EPFL’s Neuro-X Institute and since 2025 has served as EPFL’s Vice President for Support to Strategic Initiatives.

Research

Lacour’s research focuses on the integration of soft, stretchable electronic interfaces with biological tissues. Her laboratory develops electrode materials and architectures that are orders of magnitude softer than conventional metal electrodes and are designed to conform to the mechanical properties of brain, nerve, and peripheral tissue. The aim is to bridge the long-standing mechanical mismatch between rigid silicon-based electronics and soft biological systems, enabling chronic implantable neural interfaces with substantially improved biocompatibility and longevity.

Career

Lacour completed her PhD in microelectronics in France before moving to the United States in 2001 to work under Sigurd Wagner at Princeton University as a postdoctoral researcher. She was a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge from 2007 to 2012. She joined EPFL in 2011 as a tenure-track assistant professor in microengineering and bioengineering, became associate professor in 2016 and full professor in 2017, and has held the Bertarelli Foundation Chair since 2012.

Commercial spinout

Lacour is a co-founder of Neurosoft Bioelectronics, the EPFL spinout commercialising the soft, stretchable cortical electrode platform developed in her laboratory. Neurosoft was founded in 2020 by Lacour together with Nicolas Vachicouras (CEO), Ludovic Serex, and Florian Fallegger. The company closed a $7.5 million oversubscribed seed round in May 2026 led by Skybound Venture Capital.

Recognition

Lacour received the 2025 Honorary Frijda Chair, awarded by the ABC Symposium and the University of Amsterdam to honour interdisciplinary research at the crossroads of neuroscience and engineering. She held the 2023-2024 Liliane Bettencourt annual chair in Technological Innovation at the Collège de France, where she gave her inaugural lecture on 29 February 2024.