Guillaume Maimbourg, PhD, and his colleague Charlotte Constans, PhD, have both received the “Prix de la Chancellerie des Universités de Paris,” a prestigious and highly selective award across all disciplines that is based on academic and scientific quality of a PhD thesis.
Dr. Maimbourg completed internships at the Foundation during the summers of 2015 and 2016.
Both students conducted their thesis work in therapeutic ultrasound for brain therapies under the supervision of Jean-François Aubry, PhD, at the laboratory Physics for Medicine Paris (Inserm/ESPCI Paris/PSL Université/CNRS).
Dr. Maimbourg developed a novel, single-transducer transcranial focused ultrasound approach using a polymer acoustic lens. This lightweight and cost-efficient solution could accelerate the clinical transfer of transcranial brain therapy. He received second prize in the “mechanics, electronics, informatics, and technology” category.
Dr. Constans received second prize in the “physics and chemistry” category for her research on focused ultrasound neuromodulation. In collaboration with Pierre Pouget’s group at the Institute of Brain and Spinal Cord (ICM, Paris, France), she characterized the effect of low-intensity focused ultrasound in the brain and applied it to modulate brain activity in awake primates performing visual tasks.
Congratulations to Dr. Maimbourg and Dr. Constans on their amazing work. They join an outstanding list of Physics for Medicine Paris PhD graduates who have earned the Chancellerie Prize over the past years: Clément Papadacci (2015), Charlie Demené (2016), Mafalda Correia (2017), and Olivier Villemain (2018).
Physics for Medicine Paris was named a focused ultrasound Center of Excellence in December 2019.