Giovanni Stevanin is a neuroscientist and molecular biologist specialized on hereditary movement disorders. After a PhD at the Pité-Salpêtrière Hospital and a postdoctoral training at the Institut de Génétique Biologie Moléculaire et Cellulaire (IGBMC, Strasbourg), he was recruited as associate professor in 2000 and is now research director at INSERM (France) and Professor of Neurogenetics at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes university (France). He manages a team at the Institut du Cerveau et de la Moelle épinière (Paris, France) that focuses its studies on spinocerebellar degenerations, which include cerebellar ataxias and spastic paraplegias. The current projects cover both the genetic and physiopathological aspects of these diseases with the objectives to 1) identify new genes responsible for spinocerebellar degenerations using next generation sequencing in order to improve the nosology ot these disorders (the team has identified 15 causative genes in the field during the last 15 years) and 2) understand the mechanisms implicated in neurodegeneration to develop and design rational therapies to treat these diseases. This last aspect is investigated in 2 prototypes of these diseases; a) SPG11 and SPG56, 2 genes identified in the lab responsible for complex spastic paraplegias. To these ends, he benefits from an international network on these diseases: SPATAX and the associated collections of patients.