On September 30th, the Human Brain Project (HBP) formally completes its 10-year runtime as an EU-funded FET Flagship. The project has pioneered digital neuroscience, a new approach to studying the brain based on multidisciplinary collaborations and high-performance computing. The HBP will continue to have an impact on neuroscience for many years through the EBRAINS research infrastructure and a new way of collaborative work in the field.

Exciting new industrial collaborations, spin-off companies, patents and (ongoing) clinical trials have emerged from or are built upon breakthroughs of the Human Brain Project. With the end of the project in sight, we look back on some highlights of the innovations that the HBP enabled or contributed to.

The Fenix infrastructure, set up by Europe’s leading supercomputing centres, is paving the way for scientific advances in brain research.

The HBP as a European Science Collaboration, collaborating with researchers around the globe, is convinced of the high relevance of equal opportunities, equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) as the cornerstones of innovation and progress in science.

Human Brain Project researchers in Tampere University, Finland, made a comprehensive analysis of network models of neuron-astrocyte interactions and proposed how to systematically describe and categorise these interaction schemes. This is the first time such a detailed analysis on this type of computational models was conducted. Results were published in Neuroinformatics.

An interview with Gitte Knudsen on the potential of psychedelics, the biggest challenges in the field and how the HBP has not only fostered interdisciplinary collaboration but - in her view, more importantly – trust among researchers.

The EU-funded Human Brain Project (HBP) comes to an end in September and celebrates its successful conclusion today with a scientific symposium at Forschungszentrum Jülich (FZJ). The HBP was one of the first flagship projects and, with 155 cooperating institutions from 19 countries and a total budget of 607 million euros, one of the largest research projects in Europe. Forschungszentrum Jülich, with its world-leading brain research institute and the Jülich Supercomputing Centre, played an important role in the ten-year project.

Researchers of the Human Brain Project have developed a wide range of digital tools that facilitate the study and integration of insights from different scales of the brain. The HBP book “An extensive guide to the tools developed” provides a comprehensive snapshot of a set of these tools. The 108-page book is freely availble as PDF or Print.

With the Human Brain Project (HBP) successfully concluding in September, we are excited to present a new brochure highlighting some of the project’s major achievements. As a European Future and Emerging Technologies (FET) Flagship – a long-term and large-scale research initiative – the HBP has ambitiously pioneered digital brain research.

Energy consumption is one of the main problems facing modern computing. The Human Brain Project has tackled the efficiency issue – potentially changing how computers will be thought of and designed in the future.