The European Commission has today officially announced the Human Brain Project (HBP) as one of the two winners of the prestigious FET flagships. The prestigious research project aims to connect all European forces to understand one of the greatest challenges in modern science: the human brain.
The Human Brain Project will bring together all existing knowledge about the human brain and reconstruct it bit by bit using models and simulations on a supercomputer. These models will provide us with new insights into the human brain and help to develop completely new computer and robotics technologies.
The Human Brain Project involves more than 80 European and international research institutes and is expected to last ten years (2013-2023). Costs are estimated at 1.19 billion euros. The project also includes nine Dutch scientists, among them Martin Kersten from the Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica in Amsterdam. Other Dutch scientists are from VU, Erasmus, Groningen, Utrecht, Maastricht and Radboud University. The contribution of Kersten focuses on the field of scientific database management and examines in particular new forms of data storage and processing for extensive data streams that are released by simulations of the Human Brain Project.
Besides European partners also major North American and Japanese partners take part in the project. Coordination will take place from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland by neuroscientist Henry Markram and co directors Karlheinz Meier of the University of Heidelberg, Germany, and Richard Frackowiak of the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) and the University of Lausanne (UNIL).
The development of information and computer technologies (ICT) is a central point in the research project. ICT platforms will be developed for neuroinformatics, brain simulation and supercomputers. This enables to collect neuroscientific data from all over the world, integrate these data in models and simulations of the brain and checking the models based on biological data and make them available to the international scientific community.
Source: Radboud Universiteit
More information: http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/
Image: humanbrainproject.eu
