Ron Stoop received his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Biophysics from the Radboud University in Nijmegen. He subsequently trained for three years at Tsinghua University in Beijing into mandarin and (then state-of-the art) whole-cell patch-clamp electrophysiological recordings with Profs. Zuoping Xie and TePei Feng. He continued his Ph.D. thesis with Prof. Muming Poo at Columbia University in New York and his postdoc with Prof. Alan North at Glaxo-Wellcome Biomedical Research Institute in Geneva before starting his own research group at the University of Lausanne. In 2004, he joined the Center for Psychiatric Neuroscience (CNP) in Cery, consecutively as group leader, assistant-director and associate professor to translationally study fear and social behavior in rodents and humans.

His research in rodents has shown how neuropeptides such as vasopressin and oxytocin can modulate emotional circuits of the brain and how oxytocin, released during social contact, can buffer fear responses by inhibiting the amygdala, the emotional (fear) alert center of our brain. For his translational research he works with Alzheimer's patients and with descendants from South-African "Boer" settlers that carry a unique mutation which causes bilateral neurodegeneration of the cortical amygdala and increases in basic fear, generosity and empathy.