From 12-14 October 2026, the EBRAINS Virtual Users' Week brought free-of-charge, online, hands-on workshops to learners across the globe. With 344 participants from 35 countries across 5 continents, 56% of whom were women and 39% men, the event proved to be a vibrant international forum for digital neuroscience education.
A Rich Programme Spanning the Breadth of EBRAINS Tools and Services
12 virtual workshops were delivered showcasing the full range of EBRAINS tools and services:
- Co-Design for Interdisciplinary Neuroscience
- QUINT-online workflow for atlas-based quantifications
- How to collaborate with almost everyone: Digital or unplugged
- Accessing the EBRAINS atlases with siibra-explorer
- Hands-on EBRAINS Knowledge Graph: Search, Manage & Automate Your Neuroscience Workflow
- Medical Informatics Platform (MIP): Federated Discovery and Analysis of Distributed Health Data
- Hands-on: Neuromorphic Computing System BrainScaleS
- First steps in whole-brain network modelling with The Virtual Brain
- Hands On with Spinnaker
- From single-cell modeling to large-scale network dynamics with NEST Simulator
- From Atlas to Analysis: A Hands-on Introduction to siibra-python
- Building Scientific Workflows with tvb-ext-xircuits
International Outreach
The event engaged new EBRAINS users as well as those already familiar with the tools with workshops targeted at beginner, intermediate and advanced educational levels. A significant new user base for EBRAINS was reached, with 75% of registrants reporting no affiliation with the EBRAINS2.0 project.
Each workshop was delivered twice in the same day to enable users in American, Asian and Australasian time zones to participate in the workshops, as well as those in European and African time zones. This supported the extensive international reach of the event while enabling participants to choose from 24 separate learning opportunities in 6 different sessions across 3 days, providing education tailored to their individual needs.
A Collaborative Effort Across EBRAINS
This event was made possible by the extensive efforts of 49 workshop tutors, including 27 women and 22 men. Organisation and co-ordination were led by the Education Team with support from the Communications Team.
Looking Forward
The success of the EBRAINS Virtual Users’ Week sets a promising precedent for future virtual workshops, continuing to empower EBRAINS users of all educational levels and strengthen the international brain research community. On behalf of the EBRAINS Education Programme, sincere thanks go to all workshop tutors, participants and contributors who made the Virtual Users’ Week an engaging and inspiring event.
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