Biographie
Pierre-Antoine Gourraud is a university professor of medicine at Nantes University and a hospital practitioner at the Nantes University Hospital. He teaches cellular biology, bioinformatics, and public health. He is the founder of the Nantes University Hospital Data Clinic, a service dedicated to the use of health data for research and evaluation purposes, particularly from the data warehouse derived from patient care. Within the CR2TI, he conducts research in the genetics of multiple sclerosis and transplantation, and develops medical decision-support tools.
He is a former student of the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon (France) in the biology department. After earning a master’s degree in public health from Paris XI University in 2002, he obtained a PhD in immunogenetic epidemiology and public health from Toulouse-III University in 2005. He lived in San Francisco from 2009 to 2016. Arriving as a postdoctoral researcher in the neurology department at the University of California (UCSF, United States), he left as an associate professor in 2018.
In 2006, PA Gourraud earned an undergraduate degree with a specialization in philosophy from the Catholic University of Toulouse, which he later used to contribute to the study of bioethical issues in genetics, influenced by two of his mentors: Dr. Anne Cambon-Thomsen, a former member of the French National Bioethics Committee, and Professor Stephen L.
Hauser, a member of the U.S. Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues. In 2008, he founded Methodomics, a French company dedicated to statistical analyses and algorithm development in biology. During the COVID-19 crisis, he stood out by leading the MakAir project for the Defense Innovation Agency, the first 3D-printed ventilation device and the only one in the world to have been tested in humans as part of duly authorized clinical trials. MakAir was deployed abroad, notably in Madagascar and more recently in Ukraine. This mobilization, also illustrated by the design of the Argos platform for regional pandemic monitoring, earned him, at just 41 years old, the distinction of being one of the youngest civilians admitted to the rank of Chevalier in the Legion of Honor. With an h-index of 61, he is the author of over 217 publications, accumulating more than 16,000 citations. His research activities lie at the intersection of immunology, genetics, and the computational processing of health data. A dedicated educator in bioinformatics and cellular biology, he has been practicing open educational resources for over 10 years with the “Cellules & Cellules Souches” (Cells & Stem Cells) cellular biology MOOC and the “Road 66 to Medical English” medical English course. Close to the entrepreneurial world, he has been supporting several companies and international groups in health and biotechnology for many years, sharing his expertise with them.
