Meet Damien Huzard — neuroscientist, builder, founder of Neuronautix

From the rat cage to the data layer

Damien Huzard started his career on the bench. His PhD was completed at EPFL Lausanne in Carmen Sandi's Laboratory of Behavioral Genetics, studying how individual differences in corticosterone stress responsiveness shape social behavior, learning, cardiovascular function, and metabolism in rats [1]. That work fed directly into a body of literature on stress, aggression, and social hierarchies that still anchors the field today [1].

He then moved to Montpellier for two postdoctoral positions at the Institute of Functional Genomics (IGF, CNRS UMR5203 / INSERM U1191) — first in the Jeanneteau Lab on Magel2-KO and Cntnap2-KO mouse models of autism, then in the Bourinet and François labs on somatosensory neuroscience [2]. Across both roles he ran behavioral assays, Home-Cage Monitoring deployments, electrophysiology, and ECG/HRV pipelines — building the practical experience that now grounds every line of Neuronautix's consulting work.

An award-winning scientific track record

In 2022, Damien received the Excellent Paper in Neuroscience Award (EPNA) from ERA-NET NEURON for his Science Advances publication on the role of C-tactile low-threshold mechanoreceptors in affective touch and social interactions in mice [3][4]. The paper established a mechanistic link between a specific class of skin afferents and prosocial behavior — a result that has since been cited in autism, pain, and affective neuroscience contexts.

His more recent Translational Psychiatry work extends the somatosensory thread into a Shank3 mouse model of autism, demonstrating C-LTMR hyporesponsiveness and TAFA4 downregulation underlying mechanical itch hypersensitivity [5]. In parallel, a 2026 Springer book chapter on Home-Cage Monitoring technologies in preclinical research consolidates a decade of hands-on system experience into a single practical reference for the field [6]. Google Scholar lists over a thousand citations and an h-index of 8.

Why he moved from bench to infrastructure

After fifteen years inside labs across two countries, Damien made the same observation many preclinical scientists are now making: the experiments work; the data rarely does. Behavioral, physiological, and Home-Cage Monitoring datasets pile up in incompatible formats, with missing metadata, no shared vocabulary, and no realistic path to reuse — even by the same lab six months later. He published on this directly with Petit-Demoulière in Neuroscience Applied (2026), arguing that data welfare is animal welfare and that a WellFAIR research ecosystem is now both ethically necessary and technically feasible [7].

That conviction is the founding thesis of Neuronautix: a small, focused consultancy built to fix the data layer first — because better metadata, better ontologies, and better analysis pipelines are what make experiments reusable, reviewable, and worth the animals that produced them.

What he actually does — and how teams hire him

Neuronautix is not a slide-deck consultancy. Damien works end-to-end: schema design, ontology mapping, Python pipelines, deployment, documentation, and team training [8]. Concrete examples from the current portfolio:

• MetaDatApp (MAPP) — an API-first FAIR metadata platform for preclinical research, incubated by CNRS InitiUM and BIC and open source at metadatapp.net [8].
• LWTools — a Python library for LiveMouseTracker behavioral data analysis, now used across European labs for ASD and social behavior research [8].
• MBO and HCMO — open ontologies for mouse behavior and Home-Cage Monitoring, published with DOIs and aligned with the COST TEATIME effort to standardise HCM across Europe [8][9].
• FAIR-VCG and OntoHistoria — LLM-assisted tools for Virtual Control Group generation and historical preclinical data reuse, both contributing to 3Rs animal-replacement goals [8].

He is a member of the COST TEATIME action and an administrator of TheBehaviourForum — the European Q&A hub for HCM and behavioral methods — which keeps him plugged directly into how the field is moving, vendor by vendor and lab by lab [9].

Who should hire him, and what to expect

If you run a preclinical lab, a CRO, or a translational neuroscience programme and any of the following sound familiar — Damien is built for the conversation:

• You are choosing or deploying a Home-Cage Monitoring system (DVC, LMT, OldenLabs DOME, JAX ENVISION, etc.) and need vendor-neutral advice on study design, data extraction, and pipeline integration.
• Your behavioral, ECG, or telemetry data lives in incompatible formats and you need a FAIR metadata layer, ontology mapping, or LinkML-based schema that will still be usable in ten years.
• You are preparing IND-relevant NAM evidence and need data structured, traceable, and reviewable — not just generated.
• You want a working Python pipeline — DeepLabCut, SLEAP, SimBA, custom HCM analytics — built, documented, and handed off to your team.
• You want to deploy AI agents on a scientific corpus without locking your lab into a proprietary stack.

What you get: a single accountable scientist with bench credibility, an open-source-first delivery model, and a written track record of shipping the tools — not just recommending them. The fastest way to start the conversation is the contact page, an email to damien.huzard@gmail.com, or a direct message on LinkedIn.