Stéphanie P. Lacour
Stéphanie P. Lacour (born 1975) is a French neurotechnologist and full professor holding the Foundation Bertarelli Chair in Neuroprosthetic Technology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Lacour is a pioneer in the field of stretchable electronics and directs a laboratory at EPFL which specializes in the development of Soft BioElectronic Interfaces to enable seamless integration of neuroprosthetic devices into human tissues. Lacour is also a co-founding member and director of the Center for Neuroprosthetics at the EPFL Satellite Campus in Geneva, Switzerland. Early life and education Lacour was born around 1975 and grew up in France. She completed her M.Sc. in Integrated Electronic Devices at the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées (INSA) in Lyon, France, in 1998. After completing her master's degree, Lacour remained at INSA and conducted her graduate studies in Electrical Engineering from 1998 to 2001. In 2001, Lacour moved to the United States to work under the mentorship of Dr. Sigurd Wagner as postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University. During her time at Princeton, Lacour made significant advancements in developing stretchable electronics that could be implemented in biological systems more easily than typical electronic hardware. Lacour finished her postdoctoral work in 2005 and began further postdoctoral work at the University of Cambridge under the mentorship of Dr. James Fawcett where she began to explore the therapeutic potential of her technologies in repairing nerves after injury. In 2007, Lacour received the University Research Fellowship from the Royal Society and became a Research Project Manager and head of the Stretchable Bioelectronics group at the Nanoscience Centre in Cambridge, UK. Stretchable integrated circuits In 2003, Lacour published a paper looking at implementing thin gold stripes onto elastomeric substances to make electronic skins more flexible and stretchable. She found that inducing micrometer long cracks in the gold made the stripes more stretchable, while inducing buckles in the gold made the stripes have lower resistance. Lacour and Wagner further found that electrical continuity could be preserved in gold stripes with micro-fractures, even when stretched by 1% and strained by up to 22%. The incredible degree of malleability and preserved electrical continuity that these thin gold films exhibit poised them to be essential in the future construction of 3D electronic circuits. An alternative to inducing micro-fractures in gold to enhance stretchability, is inducing wave-like buckles by placing the gold films on pre-stretched elastomeric substrates. Once these substrates relax, the gold creates surface waves which are repeatedly stretchable and can serve as interconnects for skin-like electronic circuits. Stretchable Electrodes and Brain Injury Repair After developing these elastic technologies at Princeton, Lacour implemented stretchable microelectrode arrays (SMEAs) into organotypic hippocampal slice culture models of traumatic brain injury (TBI) to measure neural activity prior to, during, and after a trauma-like event. This tool will enable a better understanding of the biophysical changes during and resulting from injury to determine how neuronal dysfunction manifests in TBI. Once Lacour began her position as a Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, she collaborated with surgeons