Germany

Overview

EBRAINS Germany, the German National Node of EBRAINS, was formally established in December 2023 through a cooperation agreement between Forschungszentrum Jülich as Node Lead and initially five other partners. Three more institutions joined the agreement in 2024. EBRAINS Germany builds on the expertise and resources from the long-term involvement of its members in the development and operation of the EBRAINS research infrastructure since the Human Brain Project (2011-2023).

EBRAINS-D, a proposal submitted by EBRAINS Germany to the national prioritisation process for large research infrastructures by the German Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space at the end of 2024, is under evaluation.

Services offered

The scientific focus of EBRAINS Germany is in the areas of brain atlases, modelling and simulation technologies, neuromedicine, neuromorphic computing, neurorobotics, AI, high-performance computing and basic neuroscience research.

The services, tools and infrastructure offered to the community by the node include

• Atlases: 3D maps of the brain for navigating and analysing complex data
• Modelling and simulation: Creating and simulating computer models of brain activity in health and disease
• Medical analytics: Privacy-compliant searching, sharing and working with sensitive clinical data
• Computer infrastructure: Access to high-performance computing (HPC), Cloud and storage resources and to neuromorphic computing systems
• FAIR data: Search and exchange of data, models and software
• Collaborative digital platform: Design and development of services and tools through community contributions
• Education and training

With EBRAINS-D, a future goal of EBRAINS Germany is to integrate large multimodal structural and functional brain datasets into new AI foundation models of the brain, which will be shared to enable the community to address complex neuroscience questions.

Services onboarding

EBRAINS Germany actively shapes the future development of EBRAINS services according to the specific needs of the German scientific community. German universities and research institutions, as well as researchers and educators with an affiliation in Germany, who are interested in participating in node activities, using EBRAINS resources, or connecting their tools and services to the EBRAINS ecosystem, are invited to contact EBRAINS Germany for more information (see below for contact information).

Contact

Do you have any questions about the German Node? Please submit your question and email address below. The message will go to EBRAINS Germany Node Manager Boris Orth.