EBRAINS Highlights the Long-Term Impact of Frontier Research at the EIC Summit 2026

Representing EBRAINS, Europe's digital research infrastructure for brain research and brain-inspired technologies, Prof. Katrin Amunts, Joint CEO of EBRAINS, participated in the European Innovation Council (EIC) Summit 2026 in Brussels on 3 June. She contributed to the workshop "EIC Pathfinder: Generating Technologies with Impact", which explored how frontier research can create societal, scientific, and economic value beyond its original objectives. The EIC Pathfinder is a funding programme under Horizon Europe that offers support to research teams.

Drawing on the experience of the Human Brain Project (HBP) and its legacy through EBRAINS 2.0 project, Prof. Amunts argued that is precisely this kind of visionary public investment, the kind the EIC Pathfinder, that enables the formation of a consortium with a bold vision on research, the assembly of an excellent, multidisciplinary team, and  most importantly - gives that team the space and time needed to realise its ambition. That combination of visionary funding, outstanding collaboration, and patience is what allowed researchers to move from fundamental questions about the brain to concrete translation. EBRAINS 2.0 continues to build on this success today.

A central theme of the discussion was how to recognise early signs of impact in high-risk, frontier research. Prof. Amunts highlighted that transformative projects often create value through the emergence of new scientific communities, technologies, and collaborations long before market-ready applications appear.

Examples from the Human Brain Project ecosystem

Several examples illustrated this long-term impact. One is SpiNNaker, a neuromorphic computing platform inspired by the architecture of the brain, developed within the Human Brain Project. The technology has since been taken forward by SpiNNcloud Systems, a deep-tech spin-off from TU Dresden. At the session, Matthias Lohrmann, co-founder and CTO of SpiNNcloud Systems, spoke about the entrepreneurial journey and the pathways from scientific breakthrough to commercial application.

A team in Marseille developed The Virtual Brain technology. Thanks to the foundational work supported by the project, this has now reached the clinic through the large-scale EPINOV clinical trial - one of the biggest trials in epilepsy surgery. Using personalised virtual brain models, surgeons can more precisely identify the epileptogenic zone in drug-resistant patients and plan better operations. This is personalised medicine moving directly from research into patient care.

Another example comes from Jülich, where researchers are developing brainfm - a powerful new foundation model of the human brain at cellular resolution. It is one of the very first 18 scientific codes selected to run on JUPITER, Europe’s first exascale supercomputer at Jülich. This work will drive both fundamental neuroscience and future personalised-medicine applications.

The last example is related to computing standards: the NEST Simulator - an open-source tool for large-scale spiking neural network simulations - has now been included in the prestigious SPEC CPU 2026 industry benchmark suite. This is a strong signal that brain-inspired simulation software has reached industrial maturity and is now used by the computing industry itself to measure and compare the performance of the world’s fastest processors.

Looking ahead

The workshop also examined what kinds of support can help promising ideas progress from scientific discovery to broader impact. Participants discussed the importance of combining scientific excellence with access to industrial networks, entrepreneurial expertise, investment opportunities, and policy support -  while preserving the freedom essential for frontier research to explore uncertain and transformative directions.

Today, many of the capabilities developed through the Human Brain Project continue through EBRAINS, supporting researchers and innovators across Europe and beyond, by providing them with access to advanced data, tools and computing services. Prof. Amunts' contribution reinforced the importance of sustained investment in long-term scientific excellence and research infrastructures.