Thierry Cens obtained his PhD degree in 1997 from the University of Montpellier, France, under the supervision of Dr. Pierre Charnet, working on voltage-gated calcium channels. Then he moved, as an EMBO postdoctoral fellow, to the University of Geneva in the group of Professor Yves Dunant. In 2000, he obtained a permanent position at the Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM) as Chargé de Recherche. He joined the group of Dr. Pierre Charnet at the Centre de Recherche de Biochimie Macromoléculaire (CRBM, Montpellier, France) directed by Professor. Marcel Dorée. His research was focused on deciphering the functional properties and regulation of voltage-gated and ligand-gated ion channels from both vertebrates and invertebrates. In 2014, the group of Pierre Charnet joined the group of Professor Michel Vignes at the Institut des Biomolécules Max Mousseron, (IBMM, Montpellier, France) where they created the team Pharmacochimie de la transmission synaptique et neuroprotection.