Eric Vilain is the Associate Vice Chancellor for Scientific Affairs at the University of California, Irvine Health Affairs and the director of the UCI Institute for Clinical and Translational Science.
14 Facts About Eric Vilain
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Eric Vilain is described as "one of the world's foremost experts on the genetic determinants of DSDs" in the journal Nature.
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Eric Vilain attended the Faculte de Medecine Necker Enfants Malades in 1983, and obtained his MD in 1989.
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In 1990, Eric Vilain attended the Pasteur Institute at the Universite Pierre et Marie Curie and obtained his PhD in genetics in 1994.
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Eric Vilain then moved to Los Angeles, California in 1995 to complete his residency and to train as a postdoctoral research fellow of Medical Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles.
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In 1998, Eric Vilain became a professor of Human Genetics and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine, and was Chief of Medical Genetics at the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Urology until 2017.
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Eric Vilain left UCLA in 2017 to become the director of the Center for Genetic Medicine Research at the Children's National Medical Center and the chair of the Department of Genomics and Precision Medicine at the George Washington University School of Medicine and Health Sciences.
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In 2022 Eric Vilain became the Associate Vice Chancellor for Scientific Affairs at University of California, Irvine.
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In 1999, Eric Vilain was the first geneticist to describe IMAGe syndrome, a rare and severe congenital disease, and in 2012, identified its causative mutations.
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In 2011, Eric Vilain was one of the members of the International Olympic Committee Medical Commission and helped revise the policies on female athletes with DSDs such as androgen insensitivity syndrome, spurred by the case of South African runner Caster Semenya in 2009.
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Eric Vilain has expressed reticence on the policy, citing the inconsistent application of the policy by the International Association of Athletic Federations.
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In 2019, Eric Vilain served as an expert witness defending Caster Semenya's right to compete as a woman in athletic competitions.
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Since 2014, Eric Vilain has led the joint research unit between the French Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique called EpiDaPo, an interdisciplinary research unit which studies the societal effects of genetics, environment, and big data research.
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Eric Vilain has been conducting global health research in the Democratic Republic of the Congo since 2018, mainly focusing on infectious diseases such as Ebola and genetic factors influencing diet-induced neurodegenerative diseases.