After earning his master’s degree in Bioengineering – Cell and Gene Biotechnology at the VUB (Free University of Brussels, Belgium), Sven Vilain pursued a PhD at KU Leuven, Belgium, under the supervision of Prof. Bassem Hassan. During his doctoral research, he used Drosophila melanogaster as a model organism to investigate the role of the pro-neural gene atonal in neurogenesis, developing novel gene-targeting approaches to facilitate his studies.

He continued his scientific career as a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Prof. Patrik Verstreken, focusing on the etiology of Parkinson’s disease. Using Drosophila as a model, he studied the function of genes implicated in hereditary forms of the disease and, together with his colleagues, demonstrated that mutations in these genes disrupt presynaptic terminals via distinct biological pathways.

He is currently an Assistant Professor at Istanbul Medipol University, Turkey, where he uses axolotl salamanders and fruit flies to investigate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of regeneration and to uncover fundamental biological processes.