Sylvain Baillet, PhD
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I am fortunate to pursue an international research career that started in Europe, then USA & now Canada, nurturing multidisciplinary foundations and collaborations. My lab contributes to advancing our comprehension of the nature of large-scale, networked brain activity—how it enables complex behavior, how it is altered in disease. We have produced patented work, >300 publications and contributed to raise >$45M in research funds. We also share practical tools via free, open-source software, training programs and data repositories with anyone interested (>41,000 user accounts on all continents, >3,000 peer-reviewed research papers from users since 2011).
I have also grown a track-record of leading and developing large research projects and units, with a keen interest in the complexities and leverage potential of the institutional management of research and higher education.
Academic institutions of higher education are tremendous instruments of change and shared progress. My personal conviction is that this vision can only be realized if institutions nurture and strengthen the diversity of all talents on campus and in their community and leverage active partnerships in their region and across the globe. With a spirit that combines openness, readiness and ambition, we are well equipped to comprehend current and future challenges in a highly competitive environment, anticipate early to better embrace change, and seize opportunities that will make a positive difference for the greater good.
Promotion of Open Science – I contributed major open-science resources, which I consider as vehicles of research productivity and reproducibility. I co-created the Open MEG Archives (OMEGA) in 2015: the first open-access repository of MEG data (800 international users, >80 journal articles so far). I also share my tools and methods with open-source software. My team hosts the software integration of Brainstorm, an international NIH project, which has grown a community of >41,000 user accounts. Since 2011, 2,500 students and faculty members have attended our 40 training workshops worldwide, some users organized their own local courses e.g., in China and Iran; >3000 journal articles cite Brainstorm as the primary tool used for data analysis.
Research Administration & Leadership – I have founded and led multimillion-dollar platforms of research and clinical imaging: the MEG program I created in 2008 was recognized by US health-insurance partners and is now part of the routine pre-surgical workup of dozens of epilepsy and brain-tumor patients annually. The MEG unit I founded at McGill in 2011 has become the second busiest scanner on campus, after 3T MRI. I have led the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre (2013-17), the largest of its kind in Canada, for which I recruited 6 new PI leaders, 9 highly qualified support staff, and raised $6.4M in infrastructure grants and donations. My leadership skills have been further recognized by my nomination as Associate Dean of Research at McGill’s Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences in 2019.
In September 2023, I was elected Chair of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping.
Short bio – Sylvain Baillet graduated from Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay in Applied Physics (France) and obtained his PhD summa cum laude in Physics from University of Paris-Saclay. He has an international career profile, having held positions in France, the USA and Canada. He was a Lavoisier Research Associate at the Signal and Image Processing Institute at the University of Southern California before joining the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS, France) as a tenured Principal Investigator in 2000. He became the head of the Brain Imaging group at the Cognitive Neuroscience & Brain Imaging CNRS Laboratory in 2005, at La Salpêtrière University-Hospital in Paris. In 2008, he took a position as Associate Professor of Neurology & Biophysics at the Medical College of Wisconsin and became the founding Scientific Director of the MEG Program at Froedtert Hospital, in Milwaukee (USA). He joined McGill University and the Montreal Neurological Institute in 2011, where he has been the founding Director of the MEG Unit. He was Director of the McConnell Brain Imaging Centre at the MNI (2013-17), one of the largest brain imaging research platforms worldwide.
Sylvain is the Tier-1 Canada Research Chair of Neural Dynamics of Brain Systems and has been Associate Dean of Research of McGill’s Faculty of Medicine & Health Sciences since 2019. He is also a founding member of the Standing Committee on Science of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, and was elected Chair of the Organization for Human Brain Mapping in September 2023.
Scientific Output – My core expertise is in brain imaging and multimodal electrophysiology for systems neuroscience. I have been recognized by multiple international Career Achievement Awards and the Tier-1 Canada Research Chair of Neural Dynamics of Brain Systems (2018) for my “achievements on the world map of cutting-edge neuroimaging research.” I have been on 13 journal Editorial Boards, and am presently Associate Editor of Science Advances. I have developed pivotal methods for brain imaging and quantitative electrophysiology, with an emphasis on time-resolved brain imaging techniques, with strong interest in practical transfers to healthcare. I produced highly cited good-practice guidelines and contributed authoritative reviews of my field e.g., commissioned by Nature Neuroscience or endorsed by the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology. I consistently maintain a diverse funding portfolio (NSERC, CIHR, SSHRC, CFI, Compute Canada, Brain Canada, FRQS, FRQNT, NIH and philanthropy: >$45M; 12 active grants, 10 as PI or co-PI). I produced >135 articles, 9 book chapters (the majority as primary or senior author), >200 conference proceedings, 3 international patents, >200 invited lectures (~100 international). I publish in leading journals, from Neuroscience to Computer Science, and top-tier outlets e.g., Nature Communications, Science Advances, Nature Neuroscience, Nature Methods, Neuron, PLoS Biology, J Neuroscience, and PNAS. The quality of my research output was recognized by the French Academy of Sciences (“Outstanding publication in Biology”, with C. Sergent & S. Dehaene) and a high level of citations: >17,500 (Google-Scholar), with 4 articles in the Top 1% of most-cited publications in Neuroscience & Behavior (Web-Of-Knowledge). As a mentor and educator, I have trained >160 students (>85 grads) and 20 post-docs with backgrounds from Neuroscience to Computer Science; >25 have obtained faculty positions worldwide, many are driving successful careers in education and the industry, and several have founded spinoff companies. I have taught across the globe in Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, mainland China, Taiwan, Chile. I am also the current academic mentor of 5 early-career, junior faculty members at McGill.
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Innovation & Industry Transfers – I have experience with the management of patented intellectual property and successful industrial transfers (co-inventor of 3 patents). For example, my patented MRI work for acute stroke evaluation was transferred to the biomedical industry, used in national clinical trials, obtained CE and FDA certifications, and is now marketed worldwide.
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