The Human Brain Project, the world’s most ambitious neuroscience project, is underway. Scientists from the 135 partner institutions, co-funded by the EU with an estimated budget of €1.2 billion, are meeting in Switzerland for the official launch. Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica (CWI) is one of the partners from the Netherlands and will work on management and analysis of big data streams.
With more than 130 research institutions from Europe and around the world on board and hundreds of scientists in a myriad of fields participating, the Human Brain Project is the most ambitious neuroscience project ever launched. Its goal is to develop methods that will enable a deep understanding of how the human brain operates. The knowledge gained will be a key element in developing new medical and information technologies. The project partners meet this week at EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne), the coordinating institution. Over the course of a week, neuroscientists, doctors, computer scientists and roboticists will fine-tune the project’s details.
The Human Brain Project’s initial mission is to launch its six research platforms, composed of technological tools and methods that ensure that the project’s objectives will be met. These platforms are: neuroinformatics, brain simulation, high-performance computing, medical informatics, neuromorphic computing and neurorobotics.
CWI will be involved in the high-performance computing platform and will work on management and interactive analysis of the extensive data streams in the Human Brain Project, using their advanced MonetDB/SciQL database system. The local project is coordinated by CWI's research fellow and database researcher Martin Kersten (CWI’s Database Architectures group).
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