 In 1990, Vilain attended the Pasteur Institute at the Université Pierre et Marie Curie and obtained his PhD in genetics in 1994.Vilain then moved to Los Angeles, California in 1995  to complete his residency and to train as a postdoctoral research fellow of Medical Genetics at the University of California, Los Angeles.In 1998, Vilain became a professor of Human Genetics and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine, and served as the Chief of Medical Genetics at the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Urology until 2017.