.NeuroRestore wins part of France’s 2026 NRJ Foundation science grand prix

The 2026 Grand Prix scientifique of the NRJ Foundation – Institut de France, worth EUR 150,000, has been awarded in part to the Lausanne-based .NeuroRestore center, led by neurosurgeon Jocelyne Bloch and neuroscientist Grégoire Courtine, for their work on brain-spine interfaces that restore movement to people with paralysis. The prize is shared equally between two laureate projects, the second being the WIMAGINE implantable brain-machine interface developed by Guillaume Charvet and his team at France’s CEA-Leti Clinatec.

Based at the Lausanne University Hospital (CHUV) and EPFL, Bloch and Courtine have developed what they describe as a “digital bridge” that re-establishes communication between the brain and the spinal circuits controlling movement. The technology combines an implant that records and decodes the patient’s movement intentions in real time with targeted electrical stimulation of the spinal cord to reactivate the muscles needed to walk.

Following more than a decade of fundamental and translational research, from animal models to humans, the teams demonstrated that a person with a severe spinal cord injury could stand, walk, climb stairs and navigate complex terrain, results published in the journal Nature in 2023. The latest generation of the brain-spine interface allows more natural, fluid control of movement directly from the patient’s brain activity.

Bloch and Courtine, who co-founded the CHUV-EPFL center as well as the listed company ONWARD Medical, were also named laureates of the 2026 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering and included among Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of the year.

To learn more about this research, listen to our Getting Serious podcast conversation with Jocelyne Bloch and Grégoire Courtine, in which they discuss how their work made it possible for a paralyzed man to walk again.