Professor Christian Lüscher studied medicine in Lausanne and Berne and trained as a Neurologist in Berne and Geneva (MD graduation 1993). He conducted his thesis work at the Department of Physiology in Berne, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California San Francisco (1996-99).

He has been the head a research group at the Medical Faculty of the University of Geneva since 2000, while maintaining clinical activity at the clinic of Neurology of the Geneva University Hospital. His work aims to understand the neural mechanisms underlying addiction and other behavioral diseases. He was promoted to full professor in 2009.

The results of his research have been published in leading scientific journal, including Nature, Science and Neuron, and cited more the 12,000 times. He is a two-time European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant holder (2013-19 and 2020-25) and has received the Bing prize, the Cloetta prize and the Otto Naegeli Prize (2020).

He recent interests focus on novel protocols for deep brain stimulation based on optogenetic circuit interrogation in rodent models of addiction and obsessive compulsive disorders.