Dr. Isabelle Bolon
Researcher and Veterinarian
Biotech Campus G6.02
+41 22 379 0986
E-mail
Isabelle Bolon is a veterinarian with a long trajectory in academic research. She holds a PhD in Biology and a Master of Advanced Studies in Public Health. She has led research projects in animal health (ecotoxicology of wildlife) and human health (pathology of lung cancer, animal models of skin diseases). She specialized in laboratory animal science and served as veterinary and scientific director of laboratory animal facilities (Faculty of Medicine, University of Geneva). She worked at the UNIGE rectorate where she led the national research funding support for the UNIGE research community and coordinated UNIGE's financial contributions to major national research programs (e.g., NCCRs). Her past areas of expertise include large animal medicine, infectious disease surveillance and health monitoring of multiple research animal species, zoonotic disease prevention, laboratory animal pathology, animal research policy and regulation, and animal welfare and ethics. She currently leads the One Health Unit at UNIGE's Institute of Global Health. She conducts innovative teaching activities (e.g., MOOC, flipped classrooms, One Health education in humanitarian contexts) and interdisciplinary research in collaboration with local, national, and international partners (e.g., University Hospitals of Geneva, InZone, WHO, MSF, EPFL, Swiss TPH, Institut Pasteur, University of Montreal). Her research uses the One Health approach and digital innovations to better understand and address global health problems at the interface of human, animal, and environmental health. She is interested in emerging zoonotic diseases, the links between biodiversity and human health, the human-animal interface in urban socio-ecosystems, and neglected tropical diseases, particularly snakebite envenoming. She led the project Snapp: First medical decision‐support tool for snake identification based on artificial intelligence and remote collaborative expertise funded by the Fondation privée des Hôpitaux Universitaires de Genève and was a partner in charge of One Health in the interdisciplinary Snake-Byte project Predicting and reducing the impact of snakebite on human and animal health through interdisciplinary analyses of hotspots and access to care funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation.