More than 360 participants from Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and others will present their key results in neuroscience, medicine and computing and also discuss the future challenges facing global collaborative brain research. The summit this year is directed by Heidelberg physicist Prof. Dr. Karlheinz Meier, a member of the HBP Board of Directors and co-leader of the Neuromorphic Computing subproject.
The Human Brain Project is a European Commission Future and Emerging Technologies Flagship (FET) that aims to achieve a multi-level, integrated understanding of brain structure and function through the development and use of information and communication technologies (ICT). These technologies will enable large-scale collaboration and data sharing, reconstruction of the brain at different biological scales, federated analysis of clinical data to map diseases of the brain and the development of brain-inspired computing systems.
Through the HBP’s ICT platforms, scientists, clinicians and engineers will be able to perform diverse experiments and share knowledge with a common goal of unlocking the complex structure of the brain. With an unprecedented cross-disciplinary scope, the Human Brain Project seeks to integrate neuroscience, medicine and computing, unify brain research and benefit the global scientific community. The development and use of ICT over the HBP’s 10-year lifetime are to pave the way for the project’s ultimate goal – a simulation on the scale of the human brain.
Media representatives are invited to the official opening of the HBP Summit at 13.00 on 29 September. After brief words of welcome HBP Coordinator Prof. Dr. Henry Markram of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne will give a 30-minute presentation on the status quo and aims of the Human Brain Project. The political perspectives and scientific challenges of this major research initiative will then be discussed by several invited speakers. Following that at 15.30, brain research initiatives from the USA, Japan, China and Australia will be presented.
Human Brain Project leaders will also hold a press conference on 29 September. Prof. Markram and Prof. Meier will be available between 17.00 and 18.00 along with other members of the HBP Board of Directors. Members of the media are kindly requested to apply for accreditation to attend the opening and the press conference. They can also submit requests for coverage of specific topics or interviews with HBP investigators.
To register, please use the internet adress:
http://flagship.kip.uni-heidelberg.de/jss/SU/p/Summit2014Press
Registration closes on 24 September.
Contact
David Horrigan
HBP Chief Communications Officer
Phone: +41 21 693 72 78
email: media.requests(at)humanbrainproject.eu
Heidelberg University
Communications and Marketing
Press Office
phone: 49 6221 54-2311
email: presse(at)rektorat.uni-heidelberg.de
