Raphaël Scharfmann received his PhD in 1989 from the University of Paris VII. He then completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute in La Jolla, California (1989-1991) and obtained a permanent position at Inserm at the end of 1991. He received the prestigious Minkowski Prize (for distinguished research in the field of diabetes in Europe) (1999), the European Society for Clinical Investigation Prize (2003), the National Academy of Medicine Prize (2010), and the Bettencourt Prize (Boosting French Research) (2012). He is currently a research director at the Institut Cochin. He is also a co-founder of EndoCells/UniverCell Biosolutions, a French biotechnology company. The main objective of his group is to define the signals regulating functional beta cell mass in rodents and humans.

Raphael Scharfmann is also co-founder of the Institut Cochin Foundation.