Idil holds a dual research-industry PhD in Neuroscience from Sorbonne University, specialized in digital health studies. She completed her PhD in the Frontlab at Paris Brain Institute and the Healthy Mind startup. She is additionally an affiliated researcher in the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School. Her doctoral work explored how digital technologies, such as connected wristbands and virtual reality headsets, can help assess neuropsychiatric symptoms, notably apathy and anxiety, in frontotemporal dementia or Alzheimer’s disease patients and their informal caregivers.
In collaboration with Prof K. Schaller at the Neurosurgery Department at the Geneva University Hospitals (HUG), Idil uses intracranial and scalp EEG, brain–heart connectivity, and behavioral approaches to study the neural basis of the self in patients undergoing surgery for brain tumors or epilepsy. At the laboratory, Idil investigates bodily self-consciousness through virtual reality-assisted meditation paradigms in both novice and experienced meditators, integrating EEG, brain–heart interaction and behavioral measures. Her work aims to bridge fundamental and clinical neuroscience, mapping the cognitive and bodily dimensions of the self to better understand and preserve self-related functions across populations, and to explore how these functions can be modulated in meditative states.